Museum life is always exciting at the start of a new season. A thorough spring clean means that everything gets moved and creates the space to set out all the exhibits in new and interesting settings.
We have 63 vehicles ranging from a little three wheel Ant truck to the mighty 100 tonner Scammell; vans, trucks, buses, and a traction engine that all need cleaning and polishing, not to mention having all the mechanical bits fettled.
If you enjoy cleaning your car windows, just imagine cleaning 78 pieces of glass on a double-decker bus! Six vehicles join the exhibition this year and all have had to pass muster before being allowed into the Museum.
I have two paid employees and around forty volunteers who help me run the Museum. These volunteers perform a range of tasks from working in the café, cleaning and polishing the vehicles, giving guided tours, and working in our extensive Archives. We have approximately 250,000 photographic images, which not only show vehicles but are also a true insight into the social history of both the UK and overseas countries stretching back nearly a hundred years. It is this history that surprises many visitors.
The Museum is often seen as a place for dads and lads. But when mums, girlfriends and wives are dragged along, they quickly become fascinated by the pictures and stories of women at work, in transport manufacture, logistics, and always in the social history that can be seen in the photographs and films. Often, many generations of the same family worked for vehicle manufacturers and transport companies. It is not unusual for visitors to recognise family members of one or two generations ago.
We’ve had great fun organising our special events for 2010, planning to hold ten events, details on the Museum website www.bcvm.co.uk and we know that visitors enjoy seeing the vehicles operating. We have four new events for the 2010 Season, the first of which is our Meccano, Dinky and Hornby Exhibition, which is being held on 20th & 21st March. We expect around fifty exhibits ranging from railway layouts, to engineering structures. All will be laid out against a background of our magnificent vehicles and it will be fascinating to compare certain models with the real vehicles in our collection.
The Museum is also proud to tell the story of the Diesel Engine during 2010. This exhibition is laid out in our Engine Room and includes exhibits specially brought to the Museum from Germany where Dr Diesel originally invented the Diesel Engine. This is a must-see exhibition for anybody with an interest in engines.
Finally, we are just completing work on our M6 Exhibition, which tells the story of life on the Motorway in the 1960’s and 1970’s. These were the days of no speed limits and no crash barriers. Our collection of vehicles from this period, surrounded by artefacts, invoke a feeling of a not so long ago bygone age.
Who said working in a Museum was boring?
Stephen Bullock - British Commercial Vehicle Museum
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