Greetings from New Zealand.

I happened upon your website by pure chance and was immediately hit with a wave of nostalgia. Loved the old Black and White photographs.

I lived in Greenford Avenue in Hanwell from before WW2 until 1959 when I left to get married.

I cannot recall how many hundreds of times I travelled on the trolleys. I rode the 607's to Acton Technical College in the late forties. My visits to Griffin Park to watch Brentford play via the 655's and also to connect with the 667's to Isleworth swimming pool are forever etched into my mind.

The trolleys were quiet, swift and odourless with a huge carrying capacity and I loved 'em. Whenever I was late and chased an old route 55 STL bus I had a fair chance of catching it as it moved away from the bus stop. Not so the trolleys. Their acceleration was just too much for my young legs to cope with. Wait for the next one.

Halcyon days. Will they ever come again?

John Chant.
37 Advene Road, Cockle Bay, Howick, Auckland 2014, New Zealand.

Hello there.

My name is Jim Bishop and I have just been looking at the pictures on your website which I think is great, it brings back many memories for me of travelling on trolleybuses from Hayes, (where I come from) to Shepherds Bush Market with my mum.

The reason I have contacted you is that one of you pictures has a question mark on the location.

The picture reference is LTM205 and I can tell you that it is on the South side of the Uxbridge Road a few hundred yards short of the White Hart pub turnaround point, pictured in HT1006 & HT1009.

The photographer would probably have been outside of the Methodist Hall which was about four hundred yards before the Angel Lane junction.

I am now a bus driver myself and work for Stagecoach in East Kent at Ashford

Best Wishes.

Jim

I am most interested in your proposals for a trolleybus system as I have devised a current collector system that should allow trolleybuses to overtake each other and run like conventional buses thus overcoming the bunching problem.

I am an engineer and have had experience with overhead skid and pantograph collector systems while working with Morganite Carbon who manufactured them.

I am now retired and would be pleased to let you have details of my proposals
if you are interested.

Test message with photo.





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second attempt (from work) this time with larger image too.

Simon




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Willi Wonka has a Chocolate factory.

I have a website.

Please visit it - theres nothing to buy, except a solution to improving your (and my) health, by means of a way to improve public transport AND reduce diesel-vehicle sourced air pollution.


www.etfl.co.uk

Simon

More power to your elbow! As an ex-Cardiffian I was used as a child and into my teens of catching a trolleybus either to school, or to my grandparents or going to the park.

The great pity is that in the sixties 'fixed' transport was seen as outmoded and cumbersome and local authorities caved in to the car and motor bus lobby. Shame that we weren't more environmentally aware back then.

In the defence of the Cardiff authorities the major routes over which t-buses ran crossed two river bridges which were incapable of supporting the weight of the T-buses at the time thereby causing major curtailment of routes (perhaps they were just excuses to hasten their demise). I have seen some of the many routes in Romania in 1995 which seem to be going from strength to strength and sampled the superb modern Neoplan bodied T-buses in Lausanne. The technology is out there and if it's good enough for them surely it's good enough for us!

Time to kick arse and get the politicians at central and local government interested in how they can return their cities to a more environmentally friendly area by reducing noise and pollution - and cost doesn't come into it on a tram v t-bus basis. T-buses in all major cities - go for it!

PS. On a technical note, can someone point me to a web page where it shows just how the neutral and live conductors were prevented from shorting through the span wire. Cardiff used brass or bronze castings that were hooked directly to the span wires to support each line without any apparent insulation along the span wire itself. Just curious.

Great site. I would like to add:
In the short term - Euro norm emission regs can improve air quality. A by-pass centrifuge can deal with the excess soot retained in the lube oil can remove these fine pro-wear particles and double oil drain intervals. Check out the website:

It seems to me that the needs of the travelling public are secondary to the profit to be made by contractors from digging up the roads to lay tramways and the profit to be made by tram builders. Since trolleybuses themselves need not cost more than an equivalent diesel bus and the infastructure is relatively cheap there is little profit to be made from it and consequently no lobbying of Parliament by the contractors and bus builders.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favour of trams but know that trolleybuses provide a viable, very cost-effective transport alternative with more flexibility and shorter installation lead-time.

I have been a trolleybus enthusiast since I was 5 (travelled to school in new malden on a 604 or 605). They are still my passion & I would do anything possible to aid their reintroduction in UK!

A good read. Maybe we should force the politicians to look. It's about time common sense ruled!

I am a land use and transit development planner for the City of Edmonton's Transportation & Streets Department(and a former Londoner).
Here in this 690,000 capital city of petroleum-rich, high-tech Alberta, we have a fleet of 59 trolleybuses, 37 modern LRT vehicles and 718 diesel buses, including articulated and low-floor models.

Trolleybuses were introduced in 1939 and the fleet was renewed in 1981, together with some extension of the overhead conductors. We have 7 trolleybus routes, mainly confined to the inner city. Power for the system is supplied by the City-owned power company, EPCOR, which is a big player in Western Canada.

The system is quick, convenient, noiseless and emission-free, and operates successfully in a climatic regime that ranges from -25 deg. C for a few nights in January, to "Mediterranean" summer temperatures of 25+ C.

Edmonton has wisely retained its t-bus system, and is extending its LRT, which was the first modern system (1978) to be built in a North American city with less than one million inhabitants.

Good luck with your t-bus network proposals. I rode a last LondonT-bus in 1962, and hope to experience "back to the future" again. Let history repeat itself like London's tramlink.

Trolley buses bring back some great memories of riding to school from Lower Edmonton to Tottenham Technical College in the 1940's.

Those buses were great. No noise, no stinking diesel fumes and they could go from a stand still to 60 mph in about 30 yards. Fantastic transportation. I guess the overhead wires were a problem though? If they could carry their own electric supply they'd be the answer to every city's transport problems. I guess that's a pie-in-the-sky engineering problem though?

An interesting point....I was in San Francisco and was amazed to see a Streetcar (Tram) from Blackpool still going strong on the F-Line public transportation system. They get old trams from many countries and run them. What a great idea. Living history.

Good work! Re-electrify the buses! With pre-sorting at junctions and lay-by loops at different route stops we could make the new trolly-bus systems as flexible as we wish. Now to educate the authorities!

Outstanding advocacy for the trolley bus. Low key and thus very credible. Was the trolley bus pictured on the lefthand of the screen (the one with the green poles)for real or a product of cyber space? Again, congratulations for a job well done.

The trolleybus is an obvious answer - but here in Wellington - where some of us point out that we have what others are looking for, all we get are blank looks. How to make the trolleybus sexy? My only other comment is that perhaps - costings on new TBs for Wellington coming out in the $m range - we should be looking for simpler vehicles with older, proven control systems.

Passed this site to my friends in Malaysia, sites like this helps to restore possibly to Penang it Electric Traction

I can only say what a good job you are doing. Let us hope a couple of the London transit schemes will be trollybus based, and those that are not will be trams.

As a child I went to school on trolleybusses. They ran every 10 mins and were always on time. From Croydon to Morden. They were replaced by 2 bus routes, with waits for 30mins between busses.

You're on the right track, I agree that trams are great but they are too inflexible, I know I drive them! Trolleys have to be the future, user friendly without all the disruption of light rail construction!