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Collection, Preservation and Display of Old Lawn Mowers

Ipswich Transport Museum - In need of help

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Hopefully this is the correct sub forum for this, but Moderators please move if not.

I have recently been in discussion with a very helpful chap at the Ipswich Transport Museum, as after some research, I discovered that they hold many publications relating to various mower manufacturers.

They have an extensive collection of documentation from Ransomes, Atco (SIF) (Qualcast etc), with over 50 Lawnmowers in their collection (mostly Ransomes) although not all are on display. They have around 800 Instruction/Parts Lists, again mainly Ransomes although they have several for Qualcast machines. In addition to all this, they also have an extensive microfilm collection of Ransomes drawings - over 90,000.

I was interested to see what Ransomes Marquis publications they had, as the only Operating Manual and parts list available on this site is the 19710H for the MK4 Marquis. They have a huge list of available publications in their archives, including manuals for the MK1 Marquis upwards. They have kindly scanned in and sent me publications for the MK1, MK2 and MK3, which I will hopefully be able to make available on this site very shortly. 

As for photographs, they have many hundreds, possibly thousands, but they have yet to identify and record all that they have acquired. As a voluntary museum their resources are limited, and they would welcome new volunteers to help scan and document their records, so if anyone in the OLC lives locally, perhaps they would like to join them to see this project completed. This would then allow them to open up their collection to a wider public than has been possible to date.

If you are interested in helping them, please let me know and I will forward you the contact details that I have. 

 

 

Antbr123 Thu, 01/04/2021

RedLeader - I would certainly be interested in any JP Engineering literature they may have

Regards, Tony

Clive1997 Fri, 02/04/2021

Hi Tony

I have trawled through around 2500 items they have on mowers, didn't come across any JP material, its mainly Ransomes, Atco, SIF & Wolsely Webb. I have a couple of colleagues who have been working on their archives & all been at a standstil due to covid, I am up there later in the year & will look out for anything that may be of interest to you.

hdtrust Sun, 04/04/2021

Yes Clive they do have a good selection of items to include much film archives from Ransomes which they share ownership with Norfolk Museum Services.So they also fall under the copywrite act.

Their collection is quite good but then so it should be,as its so close to where Ransomes use to be.Their main stay is Transport of which they have many good examples.

Be warned they do not have a good record when it comes to loaning items from other collections!

Archivist

The Hall & Duck Trust