Links
Local history
Medway Council website's local history page (link updated)
The Wikipedia equivalent. Onward links to Medway's constituent towns and villages.
Funding Bodies
National Lottery Heritage Fund
The National Transport Trust, which granted an award for the restoration of GKE 68 in 2018.
The Rochester Bridge Trust, who provided a grant for the overhaul of GKE 68’s Gardner engine. See RBT site News entry for 2 October 2012!
Bus sites
The National Association of Road Transport Museums (NARTM) work to ensure regulations affecting the exhibition and operation of heritage buses are discussed, understood and disseminated to its members.
Dick Gilbert's Classic Buses site. Includes a comprehensive Events diary and huge Links list.
The M&D and East Kent Bus Club, who have given FoCT quiet support, not the least through allowing access to their comprehensive photograph archive.
Other Medway Historical sites
Chatham Historical Society “bring together those … interested in the history and archaeology of the Medway Towns…”.
Other Organisations who have helped us
Nu-Venture, the local bus operators who have provided a safe haven for GKE 68 since its repatriation to Kent in 2007.
The Medway Queen Preservation Society. Medway's much-loved paddler now under restoration.
The Cambria Trust - the organisation that now operates the restored sailing barge Cambria around south-eastern estuaries.
The Aycliffe & District Bus Preservation Society, with a 1942 Bristol K5G amongst their collection. Our friends in the north.
The Isle of Wight Bus Museum, with close connections to local operator Southern Vectis. SV have owned and operated a 1939 Bristol K5G from new, and still do so.
References
Trams
The story of Medway’s trams is told and illustrated more fully in these two references:
1. The Tramways of Kent Vol.1 – West Kent. By “Invicta” (edited G.E.Baddeley). ISBN 0948106123 (Softcover).
Publisher: Light Rail Transit Association, 1992.
2. Maidstone and Chatham Tramways. By Robert J Harley.
ISBN 1 873793 40 5 (Hardcover). Publisher: Middleton Press, 1994.
The former has more facts, the second more photographs (and maps).
Views of Chatham’s trams can be seen amongst the photograph and postcard collections of the National Tramway Museum.
Buses
Maidstone & District Illustrated Fleet History 1911 – 1995, 2nd edition. The M&D and East Kent Bus Club, December 1995. (See http://www.mdekbusclub.co.uk/publications.html)
Chatham & District 1930-1955 : The Vehicles. Details of Chatham & District buses extracted from the above publication. Includes many illustrations, and a very useful one-page summary listing all vehicles to have run with C&D, including Demonstrators. (http://www.mdekbusclub.co.uk/publications.html)
Committee on Road Safety Report to the Minster of Transport - “To consider the accident which occurred at Gillingham on 4th December, 1951”. Chairman J G Braithwaite. HMSO June 1952. (The link will provide details of how to obtain a copy of the report.)Nation