History is not just about the vehicles: an archive covering 90 years of a municipal operator has been saved, reports Nick Larkin, who was shown some of the gems
A former municipal operator’s archive said to contain more than 100,000 items has been saved by a preservation group. The material, covering Northampton Transport from tramways days to the early 1990s, had been stored in a loft at the operator’s St James Depot, which has been empty for ten years following the demise of First Northampton.
Northampton Transport Heritage (NTH), which owns a fleet of preserved buses and coaches of local interest, has been campaigning to save the depot, much of which dates from 1904. Church’s Shoes, which bought the building but has never occupied it, gave the group permission to retrieve the archive items.
NTH Chairman Graham Croucher said some archive items were saved in 2013, when the depot closed. “We managed to get some things then and we kept in touch with Church’s over other material there. They were planning an archive but this didn’t happen, and with the building for sale we were kindly allowed to collect any items – we got all of them in three days.”
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