{ ONLINE TRANSPORT ARCHIVE }

Lifelong transport enthusiast and expert Martin Jenkins became involved in the formation of Online Transport Archive (OTA) after being named as one of the beneficiaries in the will of a dedicated amateur film-maker. Martin has researched, written, narrated and directed more than 120 transportrelated videos and DVDs for Online Video since the 1990s, using the profits to help transport restoration projects. While making these productions, several prominent enthusiasts expressed their concerns to him about the long-term survival of their films, which resulted in Online Video agreeing to become custodian of this invaluable record of the UK’s past means of transport. The process started in 1999, when former Wirral councillor Allan Clayton died, having requested that his huge transport collection of cine film, negatives and slides be divided among four people according to their interests, one of whom was Martin Jenkins. Realising that this would break up a cohesive collection, Martin and the other beneficiaries agreed that an archive should be formed, separate from Online Video, but called Online Transport Archive (OTA) with Martin as the first chairman. Its purpose is to preserve and conserve transport collections and to make the images and footage available to authors, publishers, broadcasters and researchers. Eventually, OTA became a UK registered charity with a board and membership to represent the range of transport subjects held in the archive. OTA itself is actually comprised of about 40% railway and 55% road transport (trams, trolleybuses etc), besides a good amount of canals and shipping-related material. Ultimately, these subjects will be covered by Unseen - starting later this year with overseas steam, trams and trolleybuses. Unseen Archives Ltd wants to expand upon this basic model by contacting other archives who may find themselves in a similar position to OTA and also to cover more subject areas.