Memories

A bit of a trip down memory lane for this Blip. Someone may remember, way back on 8 August, that Sophie was annoyed with me about taking her to the "wrong museum".

We put that right today with a visit to the Ulster Folk & Transport Museum in Cultra, near Belfast. I don't think I've ever been inside a building that is so full of great things to photograph but has THE WORST LIGHTING EVER! All sorts of weird light from all different directions and reflecting off all the surfaces I wanted to shoot.

Anyhoo, eventually I got close to some natural light where these buses stood. Left to right, they are a 1973 Daimlet Fleetline and a 1948 Guy Harkness Trolleybus, both in Belfast Corporation (later Citybus) livery. For the transport nuts (and there are many of us!), the Daimler was hijacked and burnt out in November 1974 and was refitted and returned to service in 1976. It was finally withdrawn from service in January 1994, just eight months before the ceasefire. It was then restored by Citybus and donated to the museum as a memorial of all of it's staff who were injured or died during the Troubles (1969-1994). I've seen a number of these buses in flames myself over the years.
The Guy entered service in 1948 with it's bodywork built locally by Harkness Coach Works in Belfast. It was withdrawn in 1968 and was restored in 1995 for the museum. It was one of a fleet of 245 trollybuses in Belfast of which this is one of only five survivors and the only one restored. I cannot remember the trolleybuses in use, but I remember the overhead electric lines that they used and there are still a number of the steel poles around Belfast that held the cables aloft.

Directly behind me, when I was taking this photograph, was a Belfast tram of the sort my father went to school on in the 1950s.

My runner up, brings back different memories. I remember sitting in my best friend's father's lap steering his Cortina while he drove it along Tyrella Beach, in County Down when I was about six years old. Good times!