London Transport Museum - The Collection

The Collection

The first parts of the collection were brought together at the beginning of the 20th century by the London General Omnibus Company (LGOC) when it began to preserve buses being retired from service. After the LGOC was taken over by the London Electric Railway (LER), the collection was expanded to include rail vehicles. It continued to expand after the LER became part of the London Passenger Transport Board in the 1930s and as the organization passed through various successor bodies up to TfL, London's current transport authority.

The collection has had a number of homes. It was housed as part of the Museum of British Transport at a disused tram depot in Clapham High Street (now a supermarket) from 1963 to 1972, and then at Syon Park in Brentford from 1973 to 1977, before being moved to Covent Garden in 1980. Most of the other exhibits moved to York on formation of the National Railway Museum in 1975.

The Covent Garden building has on display many examples of buses, trams, trolleybuses and rail vehicles from 19th and 20th centuries as well as artefacts and exhibits related to the operation and marketing of passenger services and the impact that the developing transport network has had on the city and its population.

Larger exhibits held at Acton depot include a complete 1938 stock tube train as well as early locomotives from the first sub-surface and first deep-level lines.