National Transport Museum of Ireland

The collections in this museum are not as comprehensive as name may suggest, although it has many exhibits of great importance. It is essentially a collection of public service and commercial vehicles which began in 1949 with the formation of the Transport Museum Society of Ireland which was initially concerned with an attempt to preserve three Dublin trams. The Society became a limited company in 1971, and subsequently a registered charity. Initially vehicles were kept at a depot in the Glen of Imaal in Co Wicklow, which still houses the reserve collection, but the museum in the grounds of Howth Castle opened in 1986. Some 60 vehicles of the hundred or so owned by the Society are displayed, and arranged in five categories, passenger, commercial, fire and emergency, military and utility, the latter including sludge tankers, breakdown trucks and road rollers. All four marques of commercial vehicle made in Ireland are represented. Howth, once a packet port, lies north of Dublin and is easily reached from the centre of the city by Dart electric train or by bus.