This place had been on my radar for a while. I finally took the chance to visit when I travelled up to Dundee with Nicole. She had clients to see and I parked just off Albert Street and wandered down to the museum, which is located within part of an old abattoir by the docks. Admission was £8.50 and more than 100 vehicles are displayed across the four halls.
The current premises are more than adequate but they are a temporary solution. The plan is to move into a former tram depot in the Stobswell area, which offers more space and a healthy degree of authenticity. It is also planned to open a café within the external grounds which can visited by the general public without the need to purchase a museum ticket. Such a move would bring in additional revenue. Community workshops could be hosted within the main building and rooms let on a commercial basis. The 1901 tram shed has been purchased and the city council has approved the development. The relocation is slated for next year, but for now I was here to explore the current Market Mews site. The first vehicle I encountered in the entrance hall was a Robin Hood kit car (pictured above). Based in Nottinghamshire, customers were sold the car body and then fitted mechanical systems themselves (often from donor vehicles). I also examined a 1930s ice-cream cart, powered by the attached bicycle. Scotland has had motorised taxis since 1907 now electric cabs are starting to make an appearance, with over 100 operating in Dundee (round one fifth of the total). I have noticed a few while out and about and the transition to electric vehicles across society will happen eventually, although the internal combustion engine will clearly be around for a while yet. In the world of invention, those who claim the final prize don't usually deliver the goods in complete isolation. There are often competing projects and earlier prototypes that never made a breakthrough. John Dunlop is widely known as the man who gave us the first practical pneumatic tyre. But it was a fellow Scot who seriously developed the concept a few decades previously. Robert William Thomson (1822 - 1873) went down in history as the inventor of the refillable fountain pen. His "aerial wheels" consisted of hollow belts of India rubber inflated with air, within a strong outer casing that was bolted to the wheel. Thomson was granted patents in several countries but supply-chain issues and high production costs meant he was never able to manufacture his creation to any great extent. Basically the ingenious cushion of air was half a century ahead of its time. In 1845 there were no motor cars on the roads and bicycles were only just starting to appear. Therefore the invention remained little more than a curiosity during Thomson's lifetime. Dundee was involved in tyre production for half a century until the Michelin factory closed in 2020.
The Tay Ferries (known colloquially as the Fifies) plied their trade across the Firth of Tay to the Kingdom of Fife until the opening of the Tay Road Bridge in 1966. Steamships were introduced in 1821 and eventually vehicles were carried across the water as well as foot passengers. The museum has a restored 1951 Dundee Corporation half-cab bus on display. It was withdrawn in 1973 after covering more than half a million miles. Now painted in its original livery (with no advertisements), the bus is the oldest of its type in existence. By the 1850s, the Industrial Revolution was in full swing across the land but cities found it difficult to grow outwards due to a lack of public transport networks. The introduction of the horse-drawn tram changed the situation. Running on smooth rails, it was far more energy efficient than the horse bus, which had to cope with variable road surfaces. This new mode of moving people arrived in Dundee in 1877 and the system was owned by the city council. The main drawbacks were the expense of caring for the horses and the fact they struggled to cope with anything more than shallow gradients. After experiments with steam traction, all the city's tramways were converted to electric power by 1902. Heavy rail services to Dundee were vastly improved by the opening of the Tay Bridge in 1877. The North British Railway now had a much improved coastal link between Edinburgh and Aberdeen, allowing them to seriously challenge the Caledonian Company, who ran inland via Perth. The availability of the Tay Bridge removed the time-consuming constraint of transferring passengers and goods wagons to ferries, then back on to the railway. The next piece in the jigsaw would be the bridging of the Forth further south. Thomas Bouch designed the two-mile crossing of the silvery Tay. Several events conspired to cause the tragic collapse of the structure at the tail-end of 1879. The river bed was poorly surveyed and the assertion that it was lined with solid rock all the way across proved to be false. This prompted Bouch to hastily redraw his plans, using cheaper and lighter materials that could be supported by the clay and gravel ground sections. Initially, the bridge was a great success. The North British now carried over 80% of the Edinburgh to Aberdeen traffic and the journey time - even allowing for the Granton to Burntisland ferry transfer over the River Forth - was an hour shorter than the roundabout Caledonian connection. This state of affairs lasted a mere 14 months. A violent storm on a fateful December night caused the high central section of the bridge to fall as a train was making its way across. There were no survivors. 46 bodies were recovered and 59 death certificates produced, representing the number of people known to have been on the train. There may have been additional passengers who were subsequently unaccounted for. Bouch died a broken man 10 months after the tragedy. A more substantial replacement crossing opened in 1887 and the Forth was successfully bridged three years later. This railway now forms part of today's East Coast Main Line.
A large video screen showed colour footage of the trams running through the city. The system closed in 1956 after it was decided that diesel buses were the way forward. Virtually every other British city with a tram network came to a similar conclusion around this time. Blackpool was the exception. Thankfully, trams have been resurrected in several places around the UK but Edinburgh has been the only Scottish city (so far) to bring them back. The Beeching railway cuts of the 1960s hit Dundee and the wider county of Angus hard. Several routes were lost and the city also saw the demolition of the stunning Dundee West terminus (pictured above) - often described as the most tragic loss of railway architecture in the whole of Scotland. A veritable cathedral of steam. Closed in 1965, the site was cleared in order to create an approach road for the new Tay Road Bridge. The platforms below ground level were incorporated into the nearby Tay Bridge Station, which was renamed simply as Dundee. Another casualty was Dundee East, with the rationale of the time being that a small city didn't really need three main railway stations situated within walking distance of each other. These states of affairs arose across the country because the railway network was developed by private companies, who all wanted their own base. Joining up the dots was of secondary importance. I entered the hall dedicated to motor cars and an interesting exhibit was the PGE - a small electric vehicle from 1981. Built in Italy, it had a range of around 60 miles and a top speed of 37mph. Unsurprisingly, it never caught on commercially but does illustrate that experiments with electric power is not a new idea. One of the most famous automobiles on display at the museum is a licensed replica of the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang car, which featured in the 1968 fantasy musical film of the same name. Chitty was able to fly and the Dundee model - naturally enough - has retractable wings built into the bodywork. A curious object was the Nutshell Caravan - manufactured in Dundee during the 1950s and designed to offer a low-cost holiday experience for two people (and a small child). Extremely light, it could be towed by almost any car and even a motorcycle at a push! The Nutshell proved popular across the UK. The tale of Pamela Scott had an interesting human angle. After starting her working life as a clippie (bus conductress), she became the first Scottish woman to earn her Public Service Vehicle (PSV) licence, in 1968. Despite the Dundee depot being short-staffed, her appointment as a driver was met by resistance from the male workers, who threatened to strike if women were employed in this capacity.
Ultimately the national union refused to sanction industrial action and Pamela took up her position behind the wheel. Women drivers are now commonplace but we are still nowhere near a 50/50 situation. I felt the museum offered a lot more than what I'd originally expected. It's certainly worth dropping in if you happen to be in the vicinity. I decided to take a wander up Albert Street and and Forfar Road to have a look at the new premises under development. On the way I climbed the "Frankenstein Steps" - a moody stone staircase by the site of the (now-demolished) mansion house where author Mary Shelley spent two summers during her teenage years. Her famous horror novel Frankenstein was published in 1818 when Shelley was aged just 20. She may well have drawn upon her Dundee trips for inspiration. Back then, she roamed the extensive grounds and gardens of the secluded villa while the burgeoning industrial city loomed in the distance. When I finally reached the old tram depot, the first thing I noticed was the presence of sunken rails on the forecourt - a good sign for sure. The site accommodated 70 tramcars and was later converted to a bus garage. Scottish Water took over the premises in the 1990s, using the facility to store vehicles and equipment. Since becoming vacant, the condition of the depot steadily deteriorated and it was placed on the Buildings at Risk Register. Thankfully the Transport Museum will breathe new life into the place. From where I stood, I could probably have kicked a football as far as the front door of my former student house. I spent a year living at 50 Forfar Road in 1993/94 and never knew the old tram depot existed. From my digs, I turned downhill towards the city centre and scarcely checked out the other direction. Exploring historic transport landmarks didn't feature on my radar back then (pubs yes).
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