Vintage cars, bikes and a bus ride

Like a lot us from the older generation, meaning the geriatric brigade, brought up on milk, delivered to your door, red telephone boxes for phone calls and double Decker buses, sadly all that has mostly gone. Or has it? In the heart of St Helens Town centre lies the transport museum, which was constructed in 1881 for the town horse drawn trams. The museum continued its public transport services, housing steam and electric trams, trolley buses and motor buses until 1985.The museum premises, owned by St Helens council, granted a lease to Museum Society, and they moved into the rather rundown premises in 1986. Unfortunately the building was closed in 1994 due to the poor condition of the roof and became closed to the public, with only museum members being allowed in to work on the museum exhibits The museum reopened again in 2006 from grants obtained from a variety of different sources, and was renovated to the standard it is today.

St Helens has had a long industrial history, it has the Sankey, Canal, which was the first canal ever opened, and used to transport coal and glass. Coal mining has long gone, but St Helens still has a glass presence with Pilkingtons glass manufacturing.

The museum itself, has some really amazing exhibits with buses, motorcycles and pedal cycles, some of the cycle exhibits were restored and purchased from my business, which sadly closed in August, but that’s another story.

Anyway, back to the matter in hand, occasionally the museum has vintage and classic car shows and also, using their double decker buses, offers tours around the town, which is what this article is really about.

I use both film and digital cameras, but for this project I felt digital was the better option. I would have preferred a film camera, but the idea was to try and create a sort of documentary feel about the museum, ending up with the bus ride on the double decker, which I hope is achieved through the images. With a film camera I felt I would have been compromised  for a number of reasons.

All the images were quick reactions, nobody was posed, I just shot as I saw things. I still prefer a hand meter probably from my days as a wedding photographer with Hasselbad and a trusty Weston Euromaster. Which I still use today, (unfortunately I sold my Hasselbad a long time ago that and have a Kiev 88 instead)

There is something special about a completely manual SLR, uncomplicated and simple, using my Nikon D7000 there are lots of controls, which I often don’t understand or even need, There must be a lot of the older generation brought up on film and know exactly what I mean, but as the saying goes, horses for courses. Please enjoy my article.

Share this post: