Rare 1930s ice cream vendor trike restored

A rare ice cream vendor’s tricycle from the 1930s has finally been restored to its former glory - after spending the past decade collecting dust in the storeroom of a Scots museum.

Vincent Connell serves out ice creams to Niamh Reid, 5 and Lewis Timpson, 9, from a rare ice cream vendors tricycle from the 1930s

The trike was originally owned by the Giannandrea family of the Cosy End Cafe in Stirling who used it to deliver ice cream throughout the city during the summer.

Following the cafe’s closure, it was saved by late local historian Bob McCutcheon in the 1990s who took it apart with a view to giving it a new lease of life.

Sadly, Bob died in 2002 and the trike was gifted to the Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum a year later.

But due to lack of funding and other exhibitions, the trike had lay forgotten about until earlier this year when specialist bike reconditioning company Recyke-a-Bike agreed to take on the project free of charge.

Three months later, the treat transporter is now ready to go on show to the people of Stirling.

Dr Elspeth King, director of the Stirling Smith Museum and Art Gallery, said yesterday (Thur): “It is next to a miracle, it’s fantastic. Everybody who has seen the bike has really admired it.

“Many people can remember in the seeing these trikes in the 1950s and 1960s but then ice cream vans came about and they haven’t seen one since.

“It was virtually a scrapheap when we got it. We took it with a view to restoring it but 10 years later we still hadn’t got round to it.

“We spoke to Recyke-a-Bike, a wonderful company in Stirling who took it on as a sort of scrapheap challenge.

“We wouldn’t have been able to afford it otherwise and they did a great job.

“It’s not the easiest machine to handle but it looks a million dollars.”