Bradford Industrial Museum

This museum is based at the former Moorside Mills textile factory (built 1874). Originally, only 2 stories the mill was extended upwards by 2 floors during the boom period of WW1  and in 1919 an impressive clock tower was added as a memorial to the factory's workers who fell in the war. Unusually the museum houses a number of memorial plaques from closed mills or trade bodies commemorating  workers killed during WW1.

The public areas are on the lower two floors (admin and conservation operate on the top two floors) and in a semi-basement area to the north of the main building which houses the only surviving Newton Bean and Mitchell  Uniflow steam engine and a tram shed which opens onto the tram and trolley bus track which is on the exterior of the building. A former Bradford tram and a trolleybus are housed here. Across the courtyard in the "Carriage Shed" is also a horse-drawn omnibus (unfortunately a reproduction). Other external areas include a section dedicated to horse transport including a farriers workshop and a row of 6 back to back houses, Gaythorne Row. Currently each are presented in the furnishings and décor of different periods from the late 19th century, through WW2, to the 1970s.

Back in the main building visitors enter through the main lobby pat a display relating to Bradford's Nobel prize winner Sir Edward Appleton , who discovered the ionosphere and later contributed to radar development. On the ground floor is the "motive power" section , which also houses a section called the millwrights workshop. in here the lathes, drilling and milling machines etc are all driven by a belt and overhead drive shaft system as would have originally been the case. The  system is driven by a small horizontal steam engine.

The next section is the transport section with a collection of cars and motorcycles, dominated by the  (now defunct) manufacturers from the local area, notably Panther and Scott motorcycles and Jowett cars and vans. This includes an example of the Jowett Jupiter model which won the Le Mans 24 hour race 3 years in succession (1950-52) There is also a  standard gauge steam locomotive (Nellie) which operated at a local sewage treatment works from 1922 to 1977  during which time it operated in a (before its time) "carbon neutral" mode , burning dried sewage sludge and using sewer grease (largely wool grease from scouring effluent) as a lubricant. The other section on this floor deals with the printing industry in a gallery that includes compositing equipment and printing presses  and a replica of a manual type setting workshop.

The upper of the two accessible floors is dedicated to the textile industry and, as well as a display of textile testing apparatus, includes a  section on the colour checking processes. This was an important factor in the Bradford wool industry (at one time the  University of Bradford ran a, world renowned, specific degree course on  colour chemistry to support the, now much reduced, but still world beating (for high end woollen textiles),  Bradford textile industry. Several examples of local woollen products are on display.

Much of the machinery  is regularly run  but the "timetable" is volunteer dependent and thus can sometimes  be changed.