Crich Tramway Village, home of the National Tramway Museum near Matlock in Derbyshire, has opened a new attraction.

Funded by grants of £150,000 from the Wolfson Foundation and £350,000 from the Derbyshire Economic Partnership, curators at the museum have created a 'Century of Trams Exhibition. This traces 100 years of tram history, from the earliest horse trams of the 1860s, through the steam years and on to the end of the electric tram era in the 1960s. Many of the exhibits have not previously been on public display.

Commenting on the project, Glynn Wilton, museum curator said: "For the first time we can tell the complete story of Britain's tramways in one place - in particular the era of the electric trams. Displayed together are the UK's first and last electric trams, the former a vehicle which ran in Blackpool in 1885, and the latter the last electric tram to run in Glasgow in 1962."

Opening the new exhibition, celebrity auctioneer and BBC personality James Lewis said: "It's a great honour to be able to open a new gallery in a national museum and a museum that has the best collection of trams in the world. How fantastic it is that the museum is expanding and encouraging even more tourism to the area."

The new 'Century of Trams Exhibition' will also host a changing series of exhibits on loan from other museums, including the UK's only surviving double deck horse tram on loan from the National Museums of Wales. Plans are in place for other visiting exhibits from the Science Museum in London and the Birmingham Museum.

Pic (from left): Glyn Wilton, museum curator; celebrity auctioneer James Lewis; and Cheryl Cunningham, Tramway Museum Society president