Bradbury motorcycle before and after restoration

The photograph above shows the Powerhouse Museum’s 1914 Bradbury motorcycle as it looked before restoration. The Bradbury and its sidecar were suffering from corrosion and had been recoated black with a paint brush but it was basically intact, except for badly worn and torn upholstery.

The restoration philosophy for this object was that it was to be restored to new ‘as manufactured’ condition. The restoration was carried out in early 1981 by contractor Peter Scott from Meridan Motorcycles under supervision from the Museum’s own conservators.

The result is the beautiful machine below, complete with sidecar, on display in the Transport Exhibition.

Post by Lynne McNairn

Photography: Powerhouse Museum
© All rights reserved

Tags: Bradbury motorcycle, Bradbury sidecar, motorbikes, restoration, transport

The Powerhouse Museum's Photo of the Day blog features a new image each day, chosen from the Powerhouse Photo Library.

The majority of these images have been taken by Museum photographers for a variety of purposes such as for exhibitions, of objects in our collection, events, behind-the-scenes and location shots. We also feature many images taken by our Flickr community and from our visitors. We hope you enjoy the photographs and stories.

The licensing of each image varies however we are trying to release as many as possible under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.1 license.