WELL, WHAT'S CHANGED FROM LAST YEAR?
As we enter the new Events Season I always wonder what the visitors to the site on the first open day of the season will notice we have done since they last visited and what they will be blissfully unaware of! In the latter category is probably the most expensive as with all the problems with the café roof we decided it was time to call in the experts and this has been completely recovered. They did an excellent job in early January and we then left the interior to dry out until late February. Since then replacement plasterboard has been put in place, painted and the whole of the café and shop area thoroughly cleaned. If only our visitors knew what a mess it looked since they last visited and of the sterling efforts put in by a number of people to get it ready in time!
Several people helped but Maurice Collignon must be singled out for his efforts. Staying in the shop, the trouble with having a hugely successful open day is that all the stock is sold. Dave Potts has been busy restocking the shelves so that our 2005 visitors have lots of goodies to tempt them to give their cash to us.
The end of the café/shop has been used as an exhibition area since we closed the railway carriages to the public. As always, Malcolm Keeley is responsible for this display and changed it prior to the Easter reopening. The space available for this is slightly reduced as some of the storage for uniforms has been relocated from the railway carriages.
Hopefully some of our visitors will now appreciate that we are trying to cater for the disabled. With our existing toilet facilities being hopeless from this point of view a disabled toilet unit has been hired for the open season and is located near the prefab. The steps on existing toilets have also been recovered to make them less slippery in wet weather.
Mention of the prefab leads on to another area our visitors will be unaware of. Much effort has been put in to transferring spares from the prefab to the Blueline building during the past few months. Phil Ireland has done much of the moving but has been assisted by others, particularly Tom Couling who has a new found skill in dumper truck driving when transferring racking between the two locations. Hopefully the prefab will finally go during the summer.
Yet another change the casual visitor may not notice is new picnic tables. Several of the popular picnic tables constructed by EMES were showing signs of wood rot so a batch of six new ones has been acquired.
A more visual change to the site (although I bet most visitors will not have noticed) was the removal of some trees and the reduction in height of others. Several conifers had grown to such an extent that their height was giving concern so these were dealt with in January.
Much of the preparation for the open season involves cleaning and in the week before Paul Gray gave the Electric Vehicle Hall its annual spring clean. Several buses were treated to a full wash and many more had the dust removed from the bonnets and other exposed parts. During the winter Steve Johnson has paid particular attention to cleaning the insides of our Class VI fleet buses so as to make them more presentable. Four Class VI buses were available by Easter; the Bristol L5G and Midland Reds D9, S15 and S23, the latter being a new addition to the Class VI fleet having passed the test in mid-March. Much of the technical work in preparing these buses has been done by Dave Parry but Jeremy Price, Kevin Hill, Alex Potts, myself and probably others have all done their bit!
Various restoration projects have made progress and hopefully others will report this elsewhere in due course. I will however note that three buses have been prepared over winter for painting during the summer - if you want to know which, pay us a visit!
Phil Ireland
BaMMOT's AGM will be held at the Museum on Saturday 2 July, starting at 10:30am.
Chapel Lane, Wythall, Worcs B47 6JX
Tel : 01564 826471 e-mail us
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