The National Transport Museum, Howth

Jim Kilroy and I are strolling the grounds of Howth Castle, and he tells me of childhood memories, coming into Dublin from Artane on the bus with his parents. Really, though, it was the tram that did it. “I was absolutely fascinated by them. I looked upon a bus as a very frail cousin of a tram. Trams were more ponderous, and they were certainly a different animal. I liked the sounds of the tram, the trundly sounds, the sparks from the overhead cable, and there was a great sense of excitement.”

For most of the people I meet here, there was a moment, usually in early childhood, when they fell in love with a bus or a tram. As children, we are at our most eccentric, our most interesting, and then we are distracted by responsibilities that sabotage our innate fascination with the world and turn us into hairy hulking husks of our childhood selves. For these boys, now living in the bodies of the men (and one woman) who run the National Transport Museum, revisiting the fantastical creatures they admired in childhood did not reveal the banality of the bus, but confirmed that indeed, they were right all along.

Jim describes the day he discovered that the Hill of Howth tram had been dismantled. He was home from boarding school, 1959, and cycled out to Howth, stopping near Sutton Cross to catch a view of the tram. None appeared, so he cycled on. “All of a sudden it dawned on me. I saw the track broken up, the sleepers thrown aside, and I knew that my old friend had been murdered.” It was only years later that he would take on the task of raising these beautiful beasts from extinction.

It is not so much the mechanical that draws the members of the National Transport Museum Society here, but something organic, immaterial, sensory. David Blacoe, 15, and Feargal Craven, 25 love working with their hands. Both are members of Jim’s ‘tram team’.
Feargal is among the few mechanics here, and the museum allows him to indulge in the hands-on work he loves without the pressure he finds in his day job. For both Feargal and David, the allure of the old trams comes, not so much from age, but the number of people they have carried.

David got involved through Jim, whom he has known since he was about six. He’d read Jim’s books (Kilroy has written three) and liked them, but it wasn’t until he stopped up to visit one day that he felt any connection. But very quickly, it was both inexplicable and irresistible. “I don’t know really what it is,” he jokes, “maybe it was the fumes.”
But why transport? “It’s the most basic fabric in any country,” says Feargal, “It’s often the things you don’t notice until they’re gone.”

Tom Manning, the society archivist, treasurer, and postal vehicle enthusiast, preserves items from the past as well as the present: bus ledgers, equipment manuals, ticket machines, photographs, and small artefacts. “It’s the mundane that people don’t always think about.” It might seem odd today that he has detailed plans and colour schemes for the newest of Dublin buses, but in the future, someone will be grateful for his prudence.

Overall, it seems that community and camaraderie, not vehicles, are the glue that hold the Society together. And while they have in common a deep and human love for transport, their interests vary. Neither Liam Kelly, 75, or his colleague, 20-year old Joe Thorn, would regard the bus as anyone’s poor relation.

When he was very small, Joe watched the old green buses from the window of his house on the main street in Swords. “We never had a car, so any time we were on a bus there was an adventure. We were going to the beach, or into town. I got to know a few busmen when I got a bit older, around eight or nine. I used to go up and down on the bus with them. I was never interested in the mechanical side, I was just interested in seeing all the people getting on and off.”

When he was ten, he saved up 50 pounds and bought a broken tractor from his uncle, which they restored together. Joe, now twenty, has been involved here in the National Transport Museum for about four years, working with Michael Corcoran (who is nearly 80, but is too ill to be here today), whom he met four years ago.

“I came out here one day, just to have a look around. And the man I’m working with now, Michael, said, “Come here you, youngfella. Now hold that there.” So I went over and he wanted me to turn this handle for him. And he said, ‘Will you come back next week?’ So I did, and I’ve been here ever since.” It seems to be the way for many of the members.

In 1937, five-and-a-half-year old Liam Kelly had heard fantastical rumours of a thing called a double-decker bus. “There was great talk about the double deckers. One day I was in town with my mother at College Green, and my mother said, ‘Look, Liam, look at the double decker.’ And I saw this bus sailing around the Bank of Ireland, and I must have fallen in love.” I’m picturing, not a smelly bus packed with grumbly commuters, but a winged creature, descending through a backlit Sean Hillen-like Dublin. It’s fantastic.

There is a collision here of past, present and future, of real continuity, in the unexpected age profile, in the real love for the vehicles and the bond between members.
“In the years to come, it will be the likes of myself and David who will be doing this work,” says Feargal, “[Jim] is very keen on making sure we learn as many skills as possible because when all the old guard have gone, we’ll have to look after the place ourselves.”

This sprawl of old farm buildings that is now the National Transport Museum doesn’t feel mechanical or angular, but surprisingly warm and human. As I talk with the members, the place is transformed from an old cowshed full of broken buses into a refuge for endangered species whose habitats have been destroyed. They are gentle, benevolent giants, once spark-spitting and trundle-rumbling, creatures who were murdered – or at least cruelly made redundant – and are being hand-fed back to life.

Later, as I stand on the DART platform, I see it, not as a dirty Dublin train, but as a vehicle for adventure. All I need now are some caramels.

(July 2007, Totally Dublin)