On vintage wheels, a journey to the past

Swati Rai

Next time you want to wean your children off gadgets, consider taking a trip down motoring memory lane at the Heritage Transport Museum. Spread over more than 3.01 acres, the exhibits at the museum, which lies 40 km from Gurugram, focus on the transport history of India.

Once there, you marvel at the variety of displays. The space includes exhibition galleries, a library, mini-auditorium, seminar rooms, activity centre, where the child can read, see and do activities based around transport history. The collection galleries comprise an array of automobiles right from the pre-mechanised to the heavy-mechanised era, two and three-wheelers, moving engines, carts as also motoring memorabilia. It also houses modes of aviation and that of maritime transportation, to mention a few. The customised activities at the museum can enhance your go-to experience.        

An interactive tour of the museum, along with a documentary watch on the evolution of transportation with the snack and a lunch break thrown in, will have you cover the entire day, constructively.

Depending on your inclination, the highlight of your visit might just be the story of the wheel, the toy bird cart from the Indus Valley Civilisation, a railway saloon, scenes from travelling in luxury, Indian flag that has been to the moon and back, a petrol station of the early 1950s or cut section engines and bare automobile. Take your pick! To whet your motoring appetite, on show is the evolution of the Hindustan Ambassador, a hanging Piper Aircraft, a rupee mobile car and transport related contemporary art. 

According to Tarun Thakral, founder and managing trustee of the Heritage Transportation Trust, “Apart from mechanised audio guides offering an interactive experience, the museum uses multiple projectors/videos to show archival history. The Bollywood section at the museum has snippets of songs shot in vehicles.”

“The exhibits are changed and added constantly, so nothing remains static and the visitors keep seeing newer objects”, adds Thakral. The museum, which remains closed on Monday, presents a live experience as against ‘mothballed-memories’preserved in a space. So get transported to a time gone by, and perhaps of the future too!