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The Bus Inspectors officially launched on 1 January 2024, with a mission to grade the nation's 10,000 heritage buses and coaches. They will visit almost 100 collections within the National Association of Road Transport Museums, seeing the vehicles, hearing their stories and collecting data and information that will form the basis of their scoring and grading.
Ultimately, the project will identify which of the 10,000 vehicles are most significant in telling the story of UK buses, how they evolved and changed to suit people and, also, how society changed because of them.
Have a look here to read more about the project.
Fantastic Project. The Long Shop Museum in Leiston, Suffolk is based in Richard Garrett Engineering's factory and is currently restoring a 1926 Garrett Trolleybus. 101 were made and only 3 known examples survive. Fleet No 26 was sold to Ipswich Transport Corporation and remained in service until the mid 1940's when it was sold and converted to a summerhouse/caravan. Sadly most of the running gear and controls were removed and the interior stripped on seating etc. in the conversion. In 2021 our team of volunteers started painstakingly restoring the wooden bodyframe and rebuilding the chassis. Still on the lookout for the underslung differential internals, driveshaft, 50HP Bull motor and Garrett trolley base similar to an Estler design to return No.26…