The London Bus Museum – I have been meaning to write about this for ages! As you know, Tyler is obsessed with buses and wants to be a bus driver when he grows up. Having been to the London Transport Museum many times, we wanted to try something different, so we headed off to Weybridge in Surrey in the Easter holidays. The London Bus Museum is inside the Brooklands Museum and the entry ticket covers both museums. So we got to see planes as well as buses. I’ll write about the rest of Brooklands in a separate post – this post is dedicated just to the buses.
So the London Bus Museum is a HUGE green warehouse type building. Well the whole Brooklands Museum site is massive, as it has real planes to go into as well as a concorde, so be prepared for lots of walking. The bus museum is towards the back, and you can’t miss the giant green shed.
Inside, you walk past a little shop area with collector bits and bobs and then you see loads of vintage London buses lined up. LOADS!! These are just 4 of them in this photograph, but there were many more.
There was a small play area here, with wooden trains and tracks to play with and a selection of children’s transport-themed books. Ganesh was shocked at what the naughty bus got up to!
I think everybody takes a photo here – I mean, how can you not?!
Around the corner was a bus damaged in the war, I think it was a recreation of one, not an actual one. And then the bit the Tyler enjoyed the most. He sat down and changed the bus blind destinations – hard at work here.
Above our heads we could see destinations from old bus routes – you can see Windsor on the top right side, and there was Slough also (though not pictured here). This is where Tyler got to pretend to be a bus driver, pressing the pedal and turning the giant steering wheel, he was in his element here – dream job!
We went on to the top deck of an old bus – they are ever so creaky. The kids ran straight to the front.
I attempted a family photo with the self-timer.
I really enjoyed looking at the signs, from a graphic design point of view.
It is also interesting looking at the old posters on the buses, and the prices – does anyone actually remember 3d and 6p coins??
And a 4-day travelcard costing £5.25!! I think this was in the 1970s. These days a ONE-day 1-6 travelcard costs £13.
We were back around the front now, and we saw the most amazing roundel – you know we love roundels!! (See our Instagram page @tubetrainkid)
On to another bus and this one had a video playing of how they got the buses into the museum.
We ended our trip to the bus museum in the little shop of course. They had old transport magazines and maps that were free – we picked up a 2015 tube map. The shop had collector model buses, mugs, teatowels. We bought bus pin badges for £1.50 that the kids wore on their coats straight away.
Outside we were straight on the the plane museum area – but I’ll write about that separately. All in all, we really enjoyed the bus museum, especially Tyler – he said that was the best part of the Brooklands Museum.
If you fancy visiting the London Bus Museum, it costs £16 for an adult and £9 for a child (under 5s free) to get into the Brooklands Museum.
You do have to drive here as it’s at the end of a huge business park, behind Mercedes Benz World. There is a small car park, though we had to go around a few times until somebody left. And I would advise leaving at 4pm at the latest – because at 5pm the whole business park, all the workers, are leaving at the same time and there is only one road out of the park. The traffic jam out was horrendous and it took us over 2 hours to get back to Slough. I would advise getting there early and leaving by 4pm.
This is the address:
Brooklands Drive, Weybridge, Surrey, KT13 0SL
I hope you found this useful. It really is a lovely day out.
Sabrina x
