Brush trams at Crich

After living in the area for oh so many years, I finally got a chance to visit the tramway museum at Crich. True, I’ve previously visited the Black Country Living Museum, Blists Hill, and Beamish, and even ridden the trams in San Francisco, but I’d never made it to Crich! Goodness me, what a lot I’ve missed over the years!!

Now, I’d heard talk about, and seen photographic proof that an iconic part of the Brush was held in the Crich museum collection, but boy was I shocked when I saw it!

Before this, we’d wandered down to Town End, taking note of the interesting street furniture, oohing and ahhing over the Red Lion, and we’d managed to bypass the ice cream stall (the weather was far too cold!), but did pop into the sweet shop for a quarter of dolly mixtures. We stepped into the Eagle Press works, stopped to admire the police box (a Mark II, designed by Gilbert Mackenzie), and the bundy clock, then crossed over to see the K1 telephone kiosk (I’ve never seen one before!), touched the slate tiles on the roof of a low building, and admired the Belliss and Morcom reciprocating engine and generator.

My first sighting of a K1! (1)

Police box

A Lucy Box for trams (2)

We had a look at the exhibitions in the original Derby Assembly Rooms, and then sauntered back to the tram stop, and joined a queue for a tram ride. Well, there was a very big group of people who were having their photograph taken, posing in front of a tram, so we thought we’d have to wait for the next one, but for some reason they didn’t get on themselves, so there was plenty of room for us up top! We got talking to a chap who lived locally, and visited regularly, and he was thrilled to be on this particular tram, as, apparently it doesn’t come out very often!

We stayed on the tram all the way up as far as it went that day (the Sherwood Foresters Regiment Memorial was not accessible on the day we visited), and then took it back as far as the woodland walk stop, where we alighted and examined the exhibits like the mine entrances, and then took the woodland walk back towards Town End. On the woodland walk we saw lots of wood carvings, and many sculptures, and had a wonderful view out over Derbyshire.

View over Derbyshire

The monument

The woodland walk library!

The request stop

We passed the wonderful bandstand that had originally been in Longford Park, Stretford, Manchester, a lovely drinking fountain, a VR wall box, and then popped into the café for lunch – one of the few places left that serves a baked potato with coronation chicken!! Refreshed, we crossed over the tracks to the long row of tram sheds, most of which were open! We spent ages walking up and down in between the rows of trams in each shed, admiring the livery, the lovely colours, the beautiful shapes, and seeing just so many different features. Wow, I thought this was great, and then we went into the big exhibition hall …

Water fountain (3)

The VR wall box (4)

The Penfold letter box

I was reminded of my recent trip to the Transport Museum in London, but actually, having been able to ride on the tram, and not just walk around reading information boards, and stepping into static train carriages, made Crich really rather exciting!

Anyway, back to the big hall … I’d asked my partner to let me know if he spotted a falcon anywhere, which I believed might be somewhere in the hall. We split up and I was immediately attracted to the rows of trams on my left, and did my usual organised circular walk around the exhibits around the outside. Then I bumped into the hubby, who asked if I’d seen ‘the eagle’ yet, and was surprised I hadn’t and said ‘You can hardly miss it!’ And I turned to look into the middle of the room, there it was, this flippin’ enormous goldy-brown falcon, with its wings outstretched, perched on a box, as if guarding the machinery which stretched out in a big circle around it!! The ‘Brush budgie’ was hardly a budgie, it was huge!! Nor was it blue!!

Railings outside the new housing on the site of the original Falcon Works, Derby Road

To be honest, walking around the exhibition hall, and previously around the tram sheds, I was truly amazed at the number of things that the Brush had been involved with, and so pleased that we could still see them today. Some of the model trams that people had made were pretty spectacular, too, and some of them were of Brush trams. On the way out we spotted the book sale, so of course, came away with a handful of short reads – not all for us, I hasten to add!!

Our last stop was into the workshop viewing gallery, where they were working on repairing and renovating tram bodies, and where we learned more about the Brush who supplied Chesterfield with some of its trams. The smell in the workshops was amazingly evocative of childhood days! Then we passed into the Stephenson Discovery Centre, where, amazingly, we saw mention of the Leicester and Swannington railway!

After all this excitement, we again boarded the tram, and travelled all the way from Town End, to the end of the line and back again, just for the fun of it! We finished off our visit with another cup of tea in the Red Lion pub!

What a day!!

When we got home, I had a look to see which trams we'd actually travelled on, and was so pleased to find that the museum had listed them on their Facebook page, and describes them in detail on the website! 

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Notes

(1) A little bit more about telephone kiosks on an earlier blogpost

(2) More on Lucy boxes on an earlier blogpost

(3) More about Loughborough's drinking fountain on an earlier blogpost

(4) More on wall boxes on an earlier blogpost  

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Posted by lynneaboutloughborough

With apologies for typos which are all mine!

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