Museum of Transport
Museum about buses and bus tourism, with bus rides
Where?
Get there
- Public Transport
Bus, 10 mins walk - Private Transport
Street parking, not enough - Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday, 10–4, £5
- (times/price are a guide only)
Public transport: Easily accessible, near the city centre, but watch for where you need to get off—after Manchester Fort shopping centre. Private transport: at the end of a suburban backstreet with no separate parking. Can be easy, can be difficult.
Review
Appropriately sited at the back‐end of a working bus depot. Yes, the museum is about buses, but deserves it’s name because it’s about more—the Museum of Transport may be small, but packs in much. There are reconstructions of ticket offices and office rooms; displays of posters, maps, photographs; horse‐drawn carriages, glances at trams, models, and more. And many different buses—it beats a vehicle fair. The people who built the museum have done a work of maintenance and restoration—most of these buses gleam with the pride they used to have. Yet the builders have—artistic this—included a few wrecks, which lets you see the internals, or items of note that do not now exist. Aside, it’s a stunning display of colour, and in places could pass for a filmset. Turn up on the right day, and you can go for a ride—conductor and all—to, say, Heaton Park. A small cafe, too. Far more than a collection of relics, Manchester Transport Museum is an engaged and operational pocket of history. And, I might add, memorable and popular with anyone who has visited.