The Omnibus Society (OS) is celebrating the 75th anniversary of its Walsall-based Library & Archive, widely regarded as the most comprehensive collection of material recording the history of buses throughout the UK, some of it dating back to horse bus days.
OS Director Philip Kirk is the new Archivist and moves to merge the OS and Kithead Trust resources will give a unique record of the bus industry from its earliest days to the present.
At a function in the Walsall Library & Archive the Alan Mills Library was named and dedicated in the memory of the society member who had worked tirelessly to ensure that all the material in the archive was properly conserved.
Mr Kirk says: “We have an amazing resource here at Walsall that is the result of dedicated work by many members of the society who understood how important it was to save, catalogue and store irreplaceable items that tell us so much about the history of this amazing industry.
“Negotiations are at an advanced stage with the Kithead Trust with a view to merging the two collections, which will mean that an excellent service will get even better.”
Alan died in January and his widow Avril and son Mark, with OS Chairman Harry Barker, unveiled a commemorative plaque at a special function.
John Parke, a noted transport historian and journalist, assembled a small collection of timetables in his Sevenoaks home in 1942 and from this grew the comprehensive collection housed today at the OS Library & Archive in Walsall, while the society’s London collection is housed at the London Transport Museum’s Acton Depot.
The collection contains 200,000 tickets, the oldest from 1870, and 1,500,000 photographs in various forms, many being digitised.
The Society is addressing the move away from paper and, so far, 25,000 electronic PDF timetables have been downloaded allowing every service to be recorded and analysed graphically and digitally, invaluable for future researchers and transport consultants.
The OS 2017 President, James Freeman, MD of First West of England, says: “We are eternally grateful to the society members who, over the past 75 years, have recognised the importance of collecting and conserving material that will show future generations how the UK bus industry grew to make such a significant contribution to the economy and the lives of millions every day.”
