Ulster Transport Museum

The Transport Museum (part of the National Museums of Northern Ireland) is sited in parkland off the A2 road between Belfast and Bangor. It aims to show the historical development of transport in social context. The collection contains locomotives, cars, motorbikes, horse-drawn vehicles, buses, a sailing cargo ship built in Ireland in 1893 and passenger trams operated by horse, steam and electricity. The museum’s railway collection is the largest in Ireland - housed in a new purpose-built structure it includes many steam and diesel locomotives, carriages and goods wagons, and unusual items such as a special saloon carriage built in 1844 as a travelling office for the railway engineer William Dargan. One of the themes of the displays is engineering and invention in the region: examples include the DeLorean sports car and the Go Anywhere concept car invented by Rex McCandless in the 1950s. There is also an exhibition about the ill-fated transatlantic passenger ship Titanic, which was built in Belfast in 1912.