Classic cars forum & vehicle restoration.

[Scotty]

I've just registered in the last couple of days on this site, and although I’ve been aware of it for a while I’d just never got the time to spend an uninterrupted couple of hours browsing – and I’m pleased I finally got the time. On the prompting by your Admin I hope you don’t mind me sharing with you what I get up to every day – I promise it isn’t too anoraky, although I’m accused regularly of being a rivet counter, but more of that on a later date.

I'm a full-time Volunteer at the Museum of Transport (MoT) here in Glasgow, something I need to pinch myself each day because it’s so varied and interesting. The MoT has been in existence since 1964; the first incantation was housed in a converted tramcar depot in Albert Dive on the south side of the city. In 1988 the museum moved into the building that was originally just the Kelvin Hall (our version of the Albert Hall), but after a major conversion the MoT took over about a third of the floor area for displays and storage. And there it has stood in Bunhouse Road for nearly 20 years, with visitor figures each year always being 400,000 +, which I’m sure you can imagine makes for an extremely busy museum. However there it stands for only the next 3 years, because in 2009 we move into brand new, specifically designed museum building currently being built on the banks of the River Clyde. The “Riverside Museum” is to be an iconic building, designed by the London based architect Zaha Hadid, and paid for by both the people of Glasgow and the Heritage Lottery Fund. If you are interested to find out more this is a link to the details of the new museum - http://www.glasgowmuseums.com/venue/showProject.cfm?venueid=7&itemid=33


1900 Argyll 2 3/4 hp Voiturette.

With regard to myself - my involvement is with the vehicle side of the collection, with the fire appliance collection and the Argyll (example above), Arrol Johnston and Albion motor vehicles being my main focus. Sadly I’ve no "hands-on" as such as there is a full-time team of Curators, Conservators and Technicians employed to do that job, however I get to do a lot of the "odd" jobs there isn't time for the full time professionals to do. I’ve recently finished a task where I was given (!) the job of sorting, identifying and cataloguing about 5000 individual vehicle related objects collected over the last 110 years that had to be packed ready for the move in 2009. I can’t tell you how much I learned during that 3 months, it’s a whole new ball game when you open a box and discover a pair of brass Bleriot acetylene headlamps and then have to go the museum library to find out exactly what you’re looking at - my experience up until then was modern electric Lucas headlamps.


1906 Argyll Souvenir Catalogue.

On the paper archives it’s a truly remarkable experience to sit down and read the original test results for some new engine the Argyll company were trialling way back in the early 1900's. We probably have the largest single collection of Argyll’s under one roof in the world and most likely the associated paperwork or access to it to match. I know I’m not alone in this experience, but when you come across some small item of paperwork and see the actual signatures of Scottish motoring pioneers such as Peter Burt (Single Sleeve-valve Engine), Henri Perrot (4-wheel brakes) and Blackwood-Murray (Albion founder) it never fails to give me a tingle of realisation of the significance this little piece of paper may have – some of which are very significant indeed.
I was called into the Curators office one day and shown a deed box that had been in the collection, complete with it contents. The Curator reached into the box (wearing the required white cotton gloves of course) and handed me (once I’d put on mine) a single sheet of foolscap paper and on it a letter, written in pencil. “I’m working my way through this deed box and I think this is interesting, but you’ll need to do some research work to prove if it is as important as I think it is” she commented. And off I go, back to the desk where the Volunteers work to place the letter into an acrylic sleeve to protect it from any damage.
Settling myself down I read through the letter, which has a printed header “ British Antarctic Expedition 1907.” – this definitely is going to be interesting. The letter I discover was written by Bernard C. Day, who I was able to piece together was involved with a vehicle taken on the Shackleton Antarctic Expedition of 1907 – 09. After a fair bit of research I discovered that Day was in fact a “motor engineer” seconded from the Arrol Johnston Company to maintain and drive the very first internal combustion motorcar ever to have been used in the Antarctic ice. The letter does on to detail some of the difficulties he had with the ice and cold, and just how useful a motorcar was in those condition.


Bernard Day and the Antarctic Arrol Johnston 1907.

My apologies for the length of this post and I have to say I’m going to stop here as I can write for Scotland (when I have the time!), but I hope you enjoyed just a snippet of my daily duties at the museum. If there is a museum near to where you live could I recommend if you have the time to find out if they have a Volunteering Service because it can be immensely rewarding, particularly so if you have as I have, a Curator that delegates interesting work. Needless to say vacancies like this can be thin on the ground, and if you are thinking this is something you're interested in it won't be a "blank cheque" to do what you want, there are many rules and established procedures that you would have to agree to - but if you can live with that then its going to be worthwhile.

Scotty.

[buzzy bee]

Hi

Welcome to the forums! It sounds like you have got yourself a really interesting job (do you call volunteering a job, well if not, you know what I mean!).

So what vehicles does the museum have in it's collection?

Cheers

Dave

[Scotty]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for the welcome.

The museum has a fairly wide selection of transport related objects ranging from buses, fire engines, cars, commercial vehicles, motorcycles, bicycles, steam trains, model ships, tramcars, prams and engines. Although I focused on the early vehicles we have a reasonable selection of "modern" ones such as an MG's, Citroen 2CV, Trabant, Austins, Morris's, etc.
The following picture is a section of the main hall floor where one of the large motor dealers generously dismantled one of his old showrooms, transferred it lock, stock & barrel to our building and rebuilt it as it was when it was first opened in the 1950's.
Arnold Clark Showroom.

The correct title of the museum is The Museum of Transport and Technology, but for Glaswegians it's always been the Transport Museum, ever since I was a boy, and that ain't yesterday!

The technology side can range from a Polaroid camera, up to a control panel from the Chrysler, Linwood Plant and onto one of the first gramaphones Edison manufactured - but this side of the museum has other volunteers working in that field, I'm a "nut's & bolt's" man. To put into prespective, I can't remember right off the top of my head, however the vehicle collection numbers between 150 to 200 individual objects, and not all are on display, we don't have the room. Our latest acquisition for example is an armoured Rover 827 Si from Strathclyde Police Armed Response Unit, the other vehicle from this group, an armoured Range Rover went to Gaydon.
http://www.heritage-motor-centre.co.uk/museum/newexhibition.html

[Standardsteve]

Welcome to the forum, great link too (you lucky bugger all that stuff to play with)

Steve

[Scotty]

Thanks Steve - sadly I'm not allowed much hands-on with the vehicles, but the Technicians are always willing to let me know when they're doing something different, such as opening up a Beardmore engine so I can see what happening.

Its more the paper archive I get my hands on, and that in itself is almost as good as getting my hands dirty.

[PACresta]

Hi and welcome Scotty, looks like its worth a visit up there, thanks for posting.

[Billy]

Hi Scotty,
Do you have any records for the beardmore factory (Glasgow)
with reference to the mk7 taxi produced mid' fifties to mid' sixties please?
I am also looking for any brochures / adverts that may be available.
Cheers mate billy

[Scotty]

Hi Billy,

We have a 1932 Beardmore Hyper exhibit in the museum and there is an associated object file but I can't remember what's in it. When I'm in the museum tomorrow I'll have a look and see what's what.

This one is exactly the same type, colour, etc, except ours is GW 2700.



Regarding records - have you tried the Glasgow University Business Archive in Thurso St, Glasgow?

I did a quick search in their "on-line" archive details for "Beardmore" and this is the result - happy reading.

Scotty.