Collection: London Transport Museum

Collection-level records:

• Collection overview (Cornucopia)

  Transport Collection

  67 vehicles which represent the development of all modes of public transport in London, including hose uses, motor buses, horse-drawn and electric trams, trolleybuses, steam and electric passenger trains and road and rail service vehicles. There are also around 400 significant vehicle components which have been collected in their own right, including motors and engines and seating fabrics commissioned from significant designers. 200 or so models illustrate vehicle types which have not survived and an archive of 65,000 engineering drawings of stations, bridges, tunnels, tracks, the tram system, vehicles, and street and station furniture. Other items include staff uniforms, ticket machinery and train control signalling equipment, architectural fragments, station furniture and signage together with items illustrating the corporate and social life of the operation such as sports trophies.

  Art and Design Collection

  London Transport’s renowned heritage of art and design dates from the early years of the 20th century, finding its first expression in graphics but extending to architecture and applied and decorative arts. LT provided inspiration for many artists and patronage in the area of its poster campaigns, The collection includes about 500 original art works for posters, plus another 200 or so works commissioned for various purposes ranging from the functional, such as station designs, to the decorative, including portraits of important staff, and a growing number of non-commissioned works which feature LT as a main subject.

  Photographic Collection

  Over 100,000 mainly black and white photographs from the London Transport archives, starting c1906 and documenting the development and operation of London’s transport, as well as the social history of the company and of London itself. They show street scenes, passengers and staff (providing especially useful records of those in unseen jobs essential to the operation or the system), construction workers and design details of the system. The photographers include well known photojournalists such as Bert Hardy and Bill Brandt and the quality of the images is high.

  Ephemera Collection

  An extensive collection of tickets, maps and timetables as found in other transport museums, but an exceptional collection of graphic art, including 16,000 posters from 1908 to the present and including the work of designers such as McKnight Kauffer, Rex Whistler, Man Ray and Tom Eckersley, who were given considerable freedom om developing their designs. Maps, leaflets and booklets are also of the same high quality of design.

  Source: Cornucopia

  Date: Not known, but before 2015

  Licence: CC BY-NC