Can I invite anyone else who is interested to come and visit us? We welcome anyone with a genuine interest in preservation and when they see our vast collection I think they will feel we just might be doing something right. If we did not do it a major part of irelands transport heritage would no longer exist and that is a simple fact.

I hope the above will answer some contributors comments, to what in our case we feel is a sound policy. Of the 40 buses in last month only six were in scrap condition, Unfortunately we cannot show 26 of them for the moment but, believe you me, they are in superb condition and will reflect Irelands transport heritage for generations to come. Buses are arriving at the rate of three a week at the moment and that leaves little time for me going to Belfast or anywhere else and even less when I have to be in various parts of the world as well.


An operating museum needs spares. A static one does not. Therein lies the difference. The other priciple is that spares are better stored on the vehicle rather than in sheds which cost money. Hence our reason for keeping the whole vehicle. I loook with envy at Howths policy of never running anything and if we could do that then it would be so much easier. But to keep our fleet say 70% "on the button" needs a totally different approach.


Some people say that external storage will cause much deterioration of the vehicles and hope that with such a big collection we have not bitten off more than you can chew. We have bitten off more than we can chew but there is no point in life telling people they have problems if you cannot offer solutions as well. We have no problem seeing the problems but have a hell of a problem finding solutions. And there is no solution to the problem of preserving a large fleet without deterioration whetrher it be Leopard 1571 or any other vehicle.

I could not agree more about outside storage causing deterioration but the realism is that 200 buses require a lot of storage. It is a race against time - and whether one earns money fast enough to pay for the buildings - to see if they can be put undercover before they deteriorate beyond repair.


It is the old, old story as to do you attempt to keep buses with the risk of they deteriorating or do you allow them to be destroyed when they are gone for ever. In my book you save first and take the risk of losing some. In fifty years time I may be proved totally wrong in my approach but I hope not. There is no way one can tell.


As regards complaints made that we duplicate our aim is two of everything in case one has a sad accident. But take Bombardiers for example. How many of those do you think should be preserved as above all these are unique machines. My answer is probably 5 KC, 5 KR, 2 KD and 2 KE to be in full operating condition. Now let me ask a question. To keep even 5 KC operational how many spare KC's do you need? I could be totally wrong but I reckon you need a backup for every operational vehicle. So now the museum needs 10 KC's, 10 KR's 4 KD's and 4 KE's not that we have a chance of getting that, of course or do we? But that should be the aim.

Likewise for every Leopard the same rule should apply. We have fifteen M Leopards of which we plan to have 8 operational. This is a reasonable ratio. It gives us about one spare engine and gearbox for every two vehicles. For our ten active Atlanteans we have five spares.


Now let us go back to the number involved again taking the KC as an example. 10 KC's require a space of approximately 40 feet x 120 feet alone. At €60 per square foot that adds to €288,000 for storing the KC alone undercover. That is ten vehicles. Extrapolate that to 200 and you need 6 million euro for your storage which of course is not possible.