About
The London Bus Museum holds what is generally reckoned to be the finest collection of historic London buses in the world, housed in Cobham Hall within the grounds of Brooklands Museum at Weybridge. It is a separate organisation from Brooklands — run by the London Bus Preservation Trust, a charity whose origins go back to bus preservation efforts of the 1960s — but the two museums share a site and a single admission, so a Brooklands ticket includes the bus museum.
The collection covers well over a century of London's road passenger transport, from horse-drawn buses through the earliest motor buses of the Edwardian period to the classic vehicles of the mid twentieth century. The B-type, the world's first mass-produced motor bus and the vehicle that carried troops to the Western Front as well as Londoners to work, is represented, as are the STL, RT and Routemaster families that defined London's streets for decades. Green Country Area buses and Green Line coaches sit alongside the familiar red central-area vehicles, reflecting the full extent of the London Transport network into the Home Counties.
What distinguishes the museum is that the vehicles are restored and maintained to running order by the trust's own volunteers rather than preserved as static exhibits. Restoration work is visible on site, and buses regularly leave the museum for rallies, running days and private hire. Several times a year the museum holds events at which visitors can ride on the historic fleet, and these are the days on which the collection is best seen.
Alongside the vehicles the museum displays uniforms, tickets and ticket machines, destination blinds, bus stop and garage equipment, timetables, posters and photographs, together with material on the drivers, conductors and engineers who ran the system. Cobham Hall, purpose-built and opened in 2011, gives the collection a permanent home after decades in temporary premises at Cobham.
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Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
💡 Visitor Tips
- Entry is through Brooklands Museum and included in the Brooklands ticket — there is no separate London Bus Museum admission to buy.
- Time your visit to one of the museum's bus running days if you possibly can; riding a Routemaster or RT is a different experience from looking at one.
- Book Brooklands tickets in advance, which is cheaper than paying at the gate.
- Allow a full day for the site as a whole — Brooklands' motor racing and aviation collections deserve as much time as the buses.
- Talk to the volunteers in Cobham Hall; many are the people who restored the vehicles and know their individual histories in detail.
- Boarding the historic buses involves steps and is not step-free, although the hall itself is fully accessible.
- Parking on site is free, which makes driving the easiest option; the nearest station, Byfleet & New Haw, is about twenty minutes' walk.
- Check current Brooklands opening times before travelling, as winter hours are shorter than summer ones.
Highlights
The B-type: The First Mass-Produced Motor Bus
The London General Omnibus Company's B-type of 1910 was the world's first mass-produced motor bus, built in numbers that finally drove the horse bus off London's streets within a few years. It has a second history too: hundreds were requisitioned in 1914 and driven to France, carrying troops to the Western Front still wearing their London liveries, and the type became one of the enduring images of the first months of the war.
The museum's B-type is among the most historically significant vehicles in any transport collection in Britain.
The Routemaster and Its Predecessors
The Routemaster, introduced in the 1950s and designed specifically for London's conditions, remained in general service until 2005 and is probably the most recognisable bus ever built. The museum shows it in the company of the vehicles that led to it — the STL and RT families of the 1930s and 1940s that established the London double-decker's classic proportions and much of its engineering.
Seeing the sequence together makes the design lineage unusually legible, and the museum's examples are maintained in running order rather than displayed as static relics.
Buses in Running Order and the Riding Days
The defining feature of this museum is that its buses work. The London Bus Preservation Trust's volunteers restore and maintain the fleet mechanically, and vehicles regularly leave the site for rallies, running days and private hire. Several times a year the museum holds events at which visitors can ride the historic buses, sometimes over routes around the Brooklands site and beyond.
These are by a distance the best days to visit: a Routemaster or an RT in motion, with its engine and gearbox audible, communicates something no static display can.
Horse Buses and the Earliest Motor Vehicles
The collection reaches back before mechanisation to the horse-drawn buses that carried Londoners from the 1830s onwards, and to the experimental and early motor vehicles of the Edwardian years that displaced them with remarkable speed. Displays cover the operating companies, the economics of horse traction — the cost of stabling and feeding thousands of animals was the industry's central problem — and the rapid, almost total substitution of motor buses in barely a decade.
It is one of the sharpest examples of technological displacement in British transport history.
Collections
The London Bus Museum holds the largest and most complete collection of historic London buses anywhere, spanning horse-drawn vehicles of the nineteenth century, the pioneering B-type of 1910, the STL and RT families of the 1930s and 1940s, the Routemaster, and later twentieth-century types, together with green Country Area buses and Green Line coaches.
The vehicles are restored and maintained in running order by volunteers of the London Bus Preservation Trust rather than kept as static exhibits, and regularly appear at rallies and running days. Supporting collections cover ticket machines and tickets, destination blinds, bus stop and garage equipment, timetables, route maps, posters and photographs, alongside uniforms, badges and staff material documenting the drivers, conductors and engineers who operated London's bus network.
A Century of London Buses
The chronological vehicle collection from horse buses and the 1910 B-type through to the Routemaster and beyond.
The Country Area
Green buses and Green Line coaches serving London Transport's Home Counties network.
Running the System
Ticket machines, blinds, garage equipment, uniforms and the working life of London Transport crews.
Themes
Time Periods
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.