By Irvine Bell
I have followed recent discussions concerning replacing trolleybuses with diesel buses on account of road works, etc.
Any trolleybus management that substitutes on any opportunity, as Edmonton seems to, cannot be very committed to electric traction!
I remember seeing a number of road work schemes on the parts of the London system that I knew as a teenager [in the late 'fifties / early 'sixties], and means was always found to keep the "trolleys" running by shifting wiring around.
In the case of short term problems e.g. overhead damage, trolleybuses were nearly always got round or past a problem, if necessary by towing them [I remember my late father telling me how he had seen trolleybuses being towed by Landrover through a long dead section].
London trolleybuses were fitted with traction batteries [most other British systems did not bother]. I understand the nominal performance was supposed to be 4 miles / hour for one mile. I can remember one time following one for about 1/3 mile at what must have been 6 to 7 miles / hour.
London used to use batteries a lot at short working turning points that were not wired with loops or reversers e.g. at 'La Deliverance', known locally as the 'Naked Lady', just north of the junction of the North Circular Road with the Finchley Road / Regents Park Road.
Two other things I remember about battery operation:-
The first was when a trolleybus stopped on the dead section on a frog [on the passing loop at the Barnet terminus] and could not initially move. The conductor realised immediately what had happened and leapt off the back, and tried to re-position the trolley head [using the bamboo pole kept at Barnet terminus] from the insulator onto the adjacent wire. At the same time the driver just changed into battery mode and moved off, with the conductor running along behind hanging onto the trolley head via the bamboo pole!
The other was when I thought I was seeing the impossible! At the bottom of the final climb up the hill to the Barnet terminus was a low railway bridge. Unknown to me, travelling in a trolleybus approaching the bridge from one side, the wiring on the other side had been damaged by a high commercial vehicle trying to get under the bridge.
[It was probably a good thing that it hit the wiring before it got stuck under the bridge!]
As I looked out, I saw this trolleybus come sailing past the other way, at about 20 - 25 miles / hour, with the poles stowed down!
Of course, when my trolleybus got through the bridge, I could see that trolleybuses going the other way were stopping, de-poling and then using gravity and batteries to get up to quite a speed as they came down the hill.
Going back to World War Two and the Blitz, I have always understood that it was very rare to have to substitute motor for trolleybuses. Some means was nearly always found to get the trolleys through or past bomb damage. Liquid fuel was too precious to waste substituting for electric traction!