My name is Malcolm Brown, I'm a volunteer here at the Y Bridge Museum of Transport.
The museum actually is the home of the Enfield and District Veteran Vehicle Society which
was formed in 1961. They didn't have a home of their own and they went to various pubs
fun enough in Enfield. Then in 1985 the chance came up to buy a building, which is this building
here, to become a museum. This is an old pumping station. This was built in 1898. It was decommissioned,
I think it was before the Second World War, laid empty as they do of course. All the
engines were removed, just the boilers were kept in, they bought it and then by they went wild.
The cycle floor which we looked at earlier, this mainly from some chap who had used some
bike shop, so he brought a lot of his old bikes up here and displayed them up there. Some of
the cars were owned by the Trust where they've been donated. The two of the people that are still
owned by the Society, which were bought in 1962 when it first started, is the 1912 bell
size fire engine and the 1926 overhead. The 1912 bell size must be the oldest working vehicle here.
When you come to a place like this and you're a volunteer, you get used to it. I usually stay
outside and play and do whatever I'm doing or I might pop in here for some reason or other. Other
than that, I just sort of don't all go off centre cup tickles or I don't get too involved in this
side of it. But uniqueness I suppose is because you've got such a collection of, the collection is
so varied. So you can go from a plastic made pedal bike to, again, a 1912 fire engine and 1906
motorcycle and anything in between. It's just so much here that if you want to look at everything
closely, you'll be here for a very long time. The museum is struggling in as much as it needs
more people to come in and give a hand to run it. The unfortunate thing is, and as you notice it as
you get older, that you are getting older. And we had a discussion the other day, actually. And one
of the chat was saying, one morning, if any boy comes, I can't be bothered. So you won't go. So
you won't go as often as you do. And eventually you won't go at all. There's nobody to take our
places. I include myself in that, getting old. There's no young people because there's nothing
really that they can get their hands on. And do they want to get their hands on anything and get
dirty? I don't know. Part of the problem that we've spoken about this before, when you're sitting
down, you go desperately serious, which is very rarely, I hope, you're sitting there and you're
saying, well, what this place could be? And it is. It stares you in the face. It could be,
well, it doesn't sound better than it is. It could be used more often. I reckon 10 years time,
I hope I'm wrong, that this would be a very nice block of flats. Because if it stays like this,
what's going to happen? You've got to do something. You'll look to the future. And we're all 60-ish,
or the majority of them, heading towards 60. The younger person's about 50. Anything below that?
No. It seems such a shame. You've got all this, as you've noticed. And it's just sitting there,
isn't it, really? And that's what it is doing, just sitting there. And a few people come up,
keep it going. When it comes to a museum's future, I'm not sure. I'm really not sure. I mean,
it's been coming up for some years now, over the last few years. A lot of cars coming and going,
as they would over the years. It seems to have been static. Nothing real has happened. As I
understand it at the moment, there doesn't seem to be any future plans set for all the
volunteers that come in and do all the work and keep things going. I just shrugged my
shoulders off. No idea. Isn't that a sad answer?
