Historic Collections
The National Tramway Museum Collection
The National Tramway Museum is an Accredited Museum and is home to a world renowned vintage tram fleet, as well as vast collections of photographs and archive materials. The Museum’s collections are one of the most comprehensive collections of trams and tramway history in the world.
All the Museum’s collections are Designated as being of National importance and at the core of the collection is the Tramcar fleet which comprises over 70 historic vehicles. The Tramway Museum is also home to a collection of period street furniture, which includes a Postbox, a Police Box and a Stench Pipe.
The Museum is governed by a Collections Development Policy, which sets out our scope for acquiring items for the collection. Click here to view the current Collections Development Policy.
As an Accredited Museum, we have a duty to care for our collections to preserve them for future generations. Click here to view our Care & Conservation Policy.
Donating Material to The National Tramway Museum
We are grateful for all offers of donations to the collection, but unfortunately we aren’t able to accept everything offered to us. All potential acquisitions are assessed against our Collections Development Policy. If you have something you would like to offer the museum, please contact our Curatorial Department to discuss it. In the first instance, please get in touch via the enquiry form here: Curatorial Enquiry – Crich Tramway Village
Library
The John Price Memorial Library holds a unique collection of books, pamphlets, reports and Acts of Parliament covering the history of British, North American, European and other foreign tramways and light railways up to the present day.
Records of Transport Operators
The Library holds the records of transport operators, including British Electric Traction, and those previously lodged with the Bus & Coach council. The Library also holds the minutes of associations such as the Municipal Tramways and Transport Association, and the Municipal Passenger Transport Association.
Journal Collection
An extensive Journal collection is held, which includes one of the most complete runs of Tramway & Railway World in the country, as well as Light Railway and Tramway Journal, Electric Railway Journal, the Electrician and Electrical Review. There are also magazines of transport study and from other preservation societies world-wide. There is a large foreign language section.
Book Collection
The printed book collection contains descriptions of the world’s tramway and light railway systems covering electric, steam, cable and horse traction. There is information on the manufacturers of vehicles and equipment, transport law and planning.
Many of the books and journals also contain material on buses, trolleybuses and metro systems, so the development of a town’s transport can be studied in total.
Technical Drawings, Maps, Guides and Other
There are collections of technical drawings, maps and guides as well as timetables, press cuttings, tickets and general ephemera. The Library holds the small artefacts collection of badges, buttons, signs, uniforms, ticket machinery etc.
Photographic Collection
The Photographic Collection at the National Tramway Museum contains more than 40,000 images. The collection covers the history of the tram from George Francis Train’s first horse drawn tramway at Birkenhead in 1860, to the sleek modern trams appearing in our cities today.
The collection contains both official images taken by professional photographers for the Tramway Companies as well as work by the amateur photographer.
A large part of the Photographic Collection held by the Museum has been generated by tramway enthusiasts who captured the everyday life of towns and cities during the tramway era.
It’s not just images of British trams, but a large part of the collection also covers foreign tramway systems from around the world. The Photographic Collection is a unique visual record documenting ordinary street life, cars, shops, adverts, buildings and people going about their daily life.
Digitisation and New Collections
All photographic materials are vulnerable to damage from the effects of light, heat and humidity. The Museum has a long standing digitisation programme in place to digitise all of the Photographic Collection in order to preserve this valuable material for the future. Many of the images which have been digitised already can be found on our online catalogue.
As new collections arrive they are reviewed in terms of their content and the condition of the photographs. In recent years the Museum has received photographic collections such as that of the late Roy Brook. The collection contains over 3,000 black and white film negatives. One of the main concerns when assessing a collection such as this is whether it contains any Nitrate negatives. Nitrate film is a particularly unstable type of film and can degrade very quickly. Negatives identified as being Nitrate are put at the top of list for digitising in order to create a valuable digital copy.
Work is always progressing with the Photographic Collection as more photographs are digitised or new collections arrive. Throughout the year we’ll be keeping you up to date on what’s happening with the Photographic Collection via the Curator’s Choice news feature.
Purchasing Images
Images from the National Tramway Museum Photographic Collection are available to purchase. We can provide images for personal research use, as well as for commercial purposes, i.e. use in an exhibition, use in a TV programme or book publication.
If you would like to purchase any images from the collection, please take a look at our online catalogue and complete the Curatorial Enquiry Form, providing the P_ or Pc_ reference numbers which can be found on the online catalogue.
Click here for a document containing the Library Service Charges, including image pricing.
If you would like more information before ordering please contact the Curatorial Department on 01773 854321 or complete the Curatorial Enquiry Form.