A while back someone asked me if; as I live near Doncaster; I’d ever been to The Trolleybus Museum out at Sandtoft. I had to admit that despite it being there since 1969 and us living round here for the best part of 40 years I’d never heard of it. So when I saw that they had a 1940s wartime weekend over the Easter bank holiday I thought it might be nice to pop along. Since Amanda couldn’t make it I was going pack my camera and head off on my own but whilst I was getting ready Paul decided he was going to come along as well. Apparently he likes trolleybuses.

Walking down the main street put me in mind of a childhood visit to the, then, recently opened Crich Tramway Museum in 1964 for their new attraction; a ride on the electric trams. As I remember it from back then it was little more than a short single track into a quarry and a few work sheds full of trams. Despite being only a few years younger The Trolleybus Museum; founded in 1969; has  retained some of the quaintness that Crich has lost over the years. 

The afternoon was quite nostalgic for both of us since we can actually remember the trolleybuses; tracklesses as they were called round here; running in our cities. I remember how the hissing of the tyres on the surface of the road And the humming and cracklining from the overhead cables radiating from the town centre used to fascinate me as a child.

 As we strolled past the bus sheds, they even had a Nottingham No. 39, which became the number of the bus I took to school each day, we came upon a restored pre-fab bungalow full of even more memory inducing items. Paul well remembers Izal toilet paper!

Across the road we peeked into the  little cinema before hopping onto the Bradford 746 trolleybus for a short ride before searching out the fish and chip van.

We spent the last hour of our visit wandering round the wartime exhibits, the bicycle shop and a toy museum full of the toys we played with such as Meccano, Hornby train sets and Dinky cars. They even had one of those Mobo tin horses I had as a child. Mounted on a sprung frame I could, if I bounced hard enough, get it to “jump” across the floor, usually resulting in a good telling off. In fact our daughters used to do exactly the same when they had it. 

It was a lovely way to spend an afternoon and I just wish we’d had a couple more rides on the trolleybuses but there’s my excuse for a return visit.