Australian Transport Museum Business Case

The Australian Transport Museum entity was created in 2008 as a not-for-profit company to establish a museum in Armidale.

Armidale Regional Council have provided a 5,000m2 block of land in the new Armidale Airside Business Park for the ATM to be located, with the land will be given to ATM at a peppercorn rent rate. This site provides ideal access directly off the New England Highway and co-location with many other tourist attractions and amenities.

The museum will be 3,385m2 in area costing $6.1M. Exhibits will include 80-100 vintage, veteran and classic vehicles and other transport related display including a history of aviation display relating to the air services to Armidale airport. There will be a library of over 1,000 books, 15,000 original sales brochures, an electronic library and signs, badges, models etc and a visitor information centre.

Most vehicles will be donated by a local collector (valued at $3.8M), though the ATM also has vehicles to be placed on display.

Concept plans for the museum have been completed and Armidale Regional Council has approved a Development Application for the museum.

Based on passing traffic alone on the New England Highway, it is calculated that the museum will attract an additional 9,300 day visitors and an additional 8,700 overnight stays to the Armidale local government area. Visitors will spend an additional $2.9M per annum in local businesses. This expenditure will directly and indirectly create another 22 jobs in the local economy (REMPLAN 2022). This may be an under-estimate of annual visitation as it does not include other visitors to the region, to nearby tourist attractions or people passing through Armidale Regional Airport.

The objectives of this project are to:

Display vehicles and other transport related exhibits of historical significance which have been located in Armidale for decades but cannot be publicly displayed.
To create a new highly accessible and visible tourist attraction in the Armidale Regional LGA.
To diversify the tourist attractions in the LGA and the local economy which is heavily dependent on the education and training sector.

The outcome will be a state-of-the-art museum housing displays of 80-100 unique cars plus related exhibits of historical importance and interest and a reference library. The majority of the cars are currently located in Armidale and cannot be viewed by the public. These will be donated to the museum for display by the owner.

Aviation exhibits of historical interest will also be displayed. The museum will also include a tourist information centre.