About East Anglian Transport Museum

The East Anglia Transport Museum is an open air transport museum, with numerous historic public transport vehicles, many in full working order. It is located in Carlton Colville a suburb of Lowestoft, Suffolk. It is the only museum in the country where visitors can ride on buses, trams and trolleybuses, as a well as a narrow gauge railway.

The museum was founded on its present site in 1965, following the rescue of the body of an old Lowestoft tram (number 14) which had been used for a number of years as a summerhouse at Gunton. The museum site, formerly a meadow, was donated by the founder and first chairman of the Museum Society. The first buildings on the site were constructed in 1966 and full tram and trolleybus operations began in 1981, following the construction of a roadway. The Museum's narrow gauge railway, the "East Suffolk Light Railway", opened in 1973.

Tram rides are available on a route passing the museum's trolleybus depot and up to a terminus at Woodside. Originally, the trolleybus route extended as far as the trolleybus depot where passengers could change for a ride on the museum's 2 ft gauge railway to Chapel Road (the other end of the tram route), or they could stay on the trolleybus whilst it performed a 3-point turn and returned to the museum entrance via the same route.

The Museum opened Britain's first trolleybus extension for many decades in 2008, having constructed loop along the Back Road, linking in with the existing overhead wiring near to the museum's entrance. This follows the tarmacadaming of the Back Road, which previously had been a muddy field, and the renaming of this to Herting Street - in honour of the gentleman whose generous donation made these works possible.

Among the six historic trams, fifteen trolleybuses and eight vintage buses operated by the Museum is the last trolleybus to operate under its own power in London, No. 1521.