the bus-ticket museum

easthwart · the depot booth · platform two, on the right
keeper · r. fennock · ex-conductor, route 14b
open · weekdays · 7 to 9 and 4 to 6 · between buses

route 14b

to easthwart

— 3d —

route 02

to the cross

— 2d —

route 09

to old halen

— 4d —

route 14a

to the ferry

— 5d —

route 21

to hennel

— 1s —

route 06

to the works

— 2d —

route 14b

return half

— used —

route 18

to the school

— ½d —

board ii · routes withdrawn · 1947 – 1989

nine hundred and forty-three tickets, almost all of paper card, pinned to two large corkboards inside the depot's spare booth. ronald fennock collected the first of them on his own bus — route 14b — over twenty-seven years of conducting. he kept any ticket a passenger left behind. eventually there were drawers. eventually there was a museum.

the booth is open between buses. mr. fennock is small, in uniform still, though retired. ask him about any ticket and he will tell you the weather of the day it was issued. he is right about this nine times in ten. the tenth time, he tells you the weather of the day before.

the only ticket not pinned is in a glass case on the back wall: a half-ticket, route 14b, dated march of 1971, on which a passenger has written in pencil one word — wait. mr. fennock knows who wrote it. he does not say. the bus, he will say, did not wait.

field-note — the booth smells faintly of diesel and not at all of paper. a depot, mr. fennock will say, is not the same as a station.

museum stations archive road postcards