Calling All Cars

May Day long weekend for the girls means the North East P5-P7 SU Camp at Alltnachriche.  They leave late on Friday afternoon excited and raring to go, and come back Monday afternoon exhausted but happy, and hopefully returning with everything they left with

This May long weekend we decided to use our gal-free time to check out The Grampian Transport Museum in Alford (not that the girls wouldn't have enjoyed it, but you know...), which follows the history of transport in the north east of Scotland.

The museum was formed after a group of local transport enthusiasts and collectors in the early 1970s sought to develop a local transport museum.  Originally established in a local factory it has grown thanks to local council grants and subsidies and now sits on the former goods yard to the north of the former Alford railways station, and includes a track, second building to house larger exhibits and a new reception to improve the frontage of the museum.

The Craigievar Express
Andrew Lawson, a postman from Craigievar
near Alford, designed and built this steam
tricycle between 1895 and 1897.

Spragging Iron from 1900
Pioneer motorcars did not feature effective breaks.  This spragging
iron, or road anchor, was arranged at the rear of an early car so
that it could be dropped by a control wire at the point of stalling
on a steep hill climb and prevent the car from setting off backwards.

Boom Lowrider 2001
Purchased by Billy Connolly for his televised World Tour of
England, Ireland and Wales in 2011.

Granite street paving taken from Aberdeen's
Denburn during the road alterations in 1987.

Ford Model Tourer 1908
The Model T was one of the most popular cars ever, with over fifteen
million cars sold worldwide during the twenty years of production.
By 1919 almost half the cars in Britain were the affordable Ford Model
Ts , and with them mass motoring had begun

Ferrari F40 1987
Unveiled in memory of the 'great days of Le Mans when you could
drive a car on the streets or race it'.  Enzo Ferrari was celebrating 40
years in the business, hence the F40 was born.

Gravity Racer 2015
Designed and constructed by Hallam University, Sheffield, for
Channel 4's 'Speed' series, it was raced by Guy Martin to break
the world record for a gravity powered vehicle.

The car on the front of the leaflet we've been looking at all week!
We found it!  Saab 96V4
The vehicle Guy Martin has owned the longest - he purchased it
for £300 shortly after passing his test, and includes a fake-leopard
skin interior.

Mack Snowplough 6x6 1940
This truck started life as an American military tank recovery
tractor during WWII.  In the early 1960s it was bought by
Aberdeen County Council and made into a snowplough.

Union Terrace, Rosemount and Mile-End tram

The inside of an electric car

Laufmaschine 1817
The first use of two wheels in line with steering
is credited to Baron Karl von Drais, a German
civil servant in 1817

What the kids were really looking forward to was having a go at the Junior Driving School: the chance to drive safe, small electric cars on a road layout where signs, road markings and even traffic lights are explained and tested.  If they have two lots of lessons the third time would be free and they could sit an actual 'test', which they were really excited by, except we weren't going to shell out for that today.  The second lesson can be on their dime!

Sadly by the time we got out to Alford after church, enjoyed a lunch in the Alford Bistro, got round the museum, and had a cuppa and ice cream in The Traveller's Rest, there wasn't time to check out the Alford Valley Railway - a 2ft narrow guage railways between Alford and Haughton Country Park.  Joey would have loved it, and it would have been another trip down (pre-blog) memory lane for me, as way back in 2009 we had our first outing in our brand new tent.

Ach well, it just give us a reason to go back, and get that second lesson too!  Win-win say the boys.