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The Wirral Transport
Museum
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Welcome to The
Wirral Transport Museum
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Why
a tramway and museum in Birkenhead? American George
Francis Train created the first street tramway in
Europe here in 1860. He was quite a character. It is
thought that the fictional character Phileas Fogg
(Around the World in 80 days) was based on him.
The Wirral Transport Museum is housed in a building
that has seen many uses since it was built. The
original part of the building (1892) was used for
stabling horses in transit from Ireland. This was
unusual in that the stabling was over two storeys. The
stables area now houses our model railway. The next
occupant of the building was Moorhouses Minerals. Used
as a manufacturing facility for their range of
carbonated soft drinks. The company was taken over by
Birkenhead Brewery in 1951. In the late fifties the
company was taken over by Threlfalls Brewery and again
in the sixties by Whitbread Brewery. Moorhouses
lemonade then became R Whites (Whitbread Minerals
division). All production ceased in 1983. Wirral
Borough Council later purchased the building to
replace Pacific Road as the home of The Wirral
Transport Museum.
Wirral Borough Council created The Wirral Transport
Museum as a visitor attraction at Pacific Road in
1995, mainly through European funding. Pacific Road
also became home to the Merseyside Tramway
Preservation Society which was formed by a group of
Liverpool University students in 1960 to preserve
Liverpool Corporation Tramways car 869. Two Hong Kong
tram cars were purchased and shipped to Birkenhead
courtesy of P&O ferries. The Hong Kong cars
together with some of the restored heritage fleet
operated a service between Woodside and Pacific Road.
The tramway was extended to Egerton Bridge. Following
a decision to convert the rear of Pacific Road into a
theatre, the line was further extended to Taylor
Street, the line opening on 10th February 2001. The
Museum and Tramway then completed the move into the
Taylor Street building.
Between 2008 and 2011 the future of the Museum and
Tramway hung by a thread. There was constant talk of
closure due to budget constraints. The Museum and
Tramway were put up for sale by Wirral Borough Council
in 2009 / 2010 and were almost bought by Merseytravel.
They withdrew their interest at the 11th hour. In 2013
Wirral Borough Council officers approached volunteer
groups with a view to inviting us to manage and
operate the facility on behalf of the Council under an
asset Transfer. A business plan was presented to the
officers and Councillors unanimously approved, sadly
the three WBC staff who had operated the facility were
made redundant or took retirement. We started
operating and managing the Museum and Tramway in
January 2014. No real progress has so far been made
with regard to completing the Asset Transfer so we now
approach the end of our third year of operation.
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The museum closed on
the 16th December 2017 to enable the museum to undergo
major transformation. Many of the displays had to be
dismantled and artefacts put into safe storage. The work
was completed in early May which gave our volunteers
very little time to rebuild displays and clean the
museum of dust left after the buildimg work.
What's new? A new pedestrian entrance was created to the
right of the big grey door where the trams entered and
exited the museum thus making it infinitely safer for
our visitors. As you enter the museum you are greeted by
a pair of original Mersey Ferry ticket booths now fully
restored and in use as our new gift shop. Further in we
have our new tea rooms where you can relax with a hot or
cold drink and a snack. We also have our new lift in
place to enable wheelchair bound visitors and prams full
access to the upper mezzanine floor and our new viewing
area where you can watch restoration and maintenance
being carried out and easily move through to the bus
display area. We have two new sets of visitor
toilets with fully disabled person compliant toilets
also with baby changing facilities right by the tea room
and sales kiosk. The Museum was fully re-opened to the
public on 21 July 2018.
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Click on the Links at
the top if the page to explore
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