The collection's most striking quality is not its size but its provenance. These are not pristine showroom pieces. They are vehicles with histories — often strange ones. The 1923 railless trolleybus, Ipswich Corporation No. 2, was withdrawn from service in 1934 and spent its subsequent years as a caravan at Flatford. The museum acquired it in 1977. A 1926 Ransomes, Sims & Jefferies trolleybus, Ipswich Corporation No. 9, was rebuilt in the 1930s, withdrawn in October 1949, and then incorporated into a house at Theberton until the museum claimed it in 1972. The 1933 Ransomes double-decker served as a caravan at Needham Market after its 1951 withdrawal. Each of these vehicles lived a second life — domestic, provincial, improbable — before ending up under the museum's care, where volunteers have spent years and considerable sums restoring them to operational status.

Among the highlights of the collection is a horse tram built in 1880 for the Bath Tramways — a gauge that would not last. The patent cable corporation took over in 1884, then sold again; the tram was converted and passed to Bradford and Shelf Tramways, where steam locomotives hauled it until that system closed in 1903. At some point it migrated to Cambridge Street Tramways, probably in 1894, became car No. 7, and was sold at auction when that system closed in 1914. It became a shed. In 1988 it was found in Ely, its lower deck serving as a cobbler's workshop. The museum obtained it before it could be demolished. A seven-year restoration project began in 2012, assisted by a £49,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Removing the toplight windows revealed handwriting inside confirming the original Bath manufacture. The upper deck — added at Bradford in the 1880s — had to be largely recreated. The tram is now restored in the livery of Cambridge Street Tramways No. 7.

Ipswich was a manufacturing town, and the museum reflects that identity. Ransomes, Sims & Jefferies — the engineering firm that helped define Ipswich's industrial character — is represented throughout the collection. Their trolleybuses, a crawler tractor, an electric dustcart originally hired by Birmingham City Council in 1915, and various agricultural machines all appear. The museum also houses the Ipswich Engineering Collection, with items from Ransomes & Rapier, Cranes, Reavell, and Cocksedge. Cranes, fork lift trucks, and lawnmowers share space with the buses and trams. This is not incidental. The Ransome family funded Ipswich's first natural history museum. Their machinery shaped how the town worked. Having that machinery preserved a short distance from the museum they helped to found gives the collection a layered coherence that goes beyond transportation.

The museum is a registered charity, open Sundays from April to November and on weekday afternoons during school holidays. Each year in early May, it organizes the Ipswich to Felixstowe Run, sending vintage vehicles from Christchurch Park to the promenade at Felixstowe — a public demonstration of the collection in motion. The restoration work continues year-round in the workshop, staffed almost entirely by volunteers. A Co-op horse-drawn bread van was completed around 2018. A 1939 Dennis Ace bus and a 1965 Scammell Scarab mechanical horse were in progress at the same time. In 2018, a £7,000 grant from the Association of Industrial Archaeology enabled work to begin on a Co-op battery-electric coal truck, with new batteries and refurbished motor equipment. The work is slow, meticulous, and sustained by genuine enthusiasm for the machines themselves and for what they meant to the people of Ipswich.