William Lee:
when time permits (novice modeller and trying to obtain information on electric railway/ traction modelling)
Aspirations: become trolley coach operator in the future.
Interesting skills:
facilities to produce videos almost broadcast quality)
Non-transit:
Present employement:
networks.
Well, I am ...
Wolfgang Auer:
Enthusiast of "linebound" transit, student of Technical Mathematics, programmer in one of Austria's largest banks. Neither professional relation to transit, nor active member in any (historical, e. g.) transit group, but active transit user day by day, despite of being brought-up by car-head parents and living with my (formerly ;-) car-oriented fianc'ee.
My main interest are trams/streetcars (since 1979), and in this field, I also have more knowledge than in regard to trolleybuses. However,I hope that the members of this list don't mind my inclined-to-rail base, and appreciate my presence as non-professionalist though. Recently, I moved to a place very well reachable by transit just at the former single Wien trolleybus route (closed in 1958).
Non-transit interests: Computers and Algorithms, Volleyball, Travellingby Rail, Walking in and around the City, Languages and Linguistics (hi, Richard :-)
Best regards from Wien,
Wolfgang Auer -------------------------------------- ohne AUTO doppelt MOBIL
John Howes:
Retired professor at the University of British Columbia. Lifelong interest
n rail passenger travel. Served on Via West citizen's committee for about
ten years. Cycled to work and about Vancouver on business for over twenty
years. Increasingly dedicated to urban public transport, particularly by
etb. Excited to see how active the group is. John Howes
Ian Fisher
Public transit & ETB advocate
President, Transport 2000 BC (public transit advocacy group) 1992-
MA Student, School of Community and Regional Planning, University of
British Columbia (course work complete, thesis getting started!)
Lived no more than one block from an ETB route for the last 21 years (3
addresses).
Soon to move to new address 3 short blocks from an ETB route.
Aspirations: transit and/or land use planner
Non-transit:
Enthusiastic hiker and minor league mountaineer.
Paul Grether:
Belated introduction. My name is Paul Grether and I am a student at Ga
Tech in Atlanta by day, volunteer at the Southeastern Railway Museum by
night. Myself and another member convinced a local army reserve unit to
rescue Atlanta etb #1296 from the backwoods (Deliverence country) of
extreme north Georgia and bring it to the museum, where we are
cosmetically restoring it. Museum web page is http://www.mdtsoft.com/srm ;
I am hoping to put up a page specifically for #1296 soon. It is a 1947
Pullman - Standard 45CX.
Rick Sefarian:
I have been a trackless fan for over 30 years. I helped found the now
defunct North American Trackless Trolley Association as well as the New York
Division of NATTA. I have many books on trackless, and I collect trackless
stamps ( postage and cinderella), postcards, signs, etc. I have HO and N guage
trackless models ( the N is not yet operational) as well as non-powered models
in other scales. I correspond with trackless fans in Japan, The Netherlands,
and The Czech Republic. I have a massive slide collection as well as photos and
videos of TTs. I am s-l-o-w-l-y restoring an ex-Johnstown Brill at the
Seashore Trolley Museum. While living in NYC I was much more active with TTs
but I still keep my hand in. No more needlepoint trackless, however. Most
recently I photographed and videotaped the now aborted Kaman ASV project in
Boston. End of transmission.
Charlie Brown
Just thought that I'd introduce myself. There have been a few
notable Charles Brown's in the rail and transit industries. I'm not one
of them. I'm a bus driver for Long Beach Transit and would be driving
an ETB today if the system had been built. Long Beach was considering
going ahead with their own system after LA backed out. We had the money
for the infrastructure, but nothing left over for buses (although I
would've settled for driving one of those Surrey Brills). I've still
got some promotional brochures if anyone wants one or is running low on
toilet paper.
Although my name is Charles, everybody calls me Charlie. Except
for my mom who used to call me Shep (she always got me confused with the
dog). The only ETB that I've driven was CTA 9631 on Illinois Railway
Museum's line. Glen Andersen was kind enough to let me drive it and I
repaid him by breaking the thing (really sorry about that, Glen). I
don't have any particular expertise with ETB's to offer the group, but I
hope that you'll let me go along for the ride. And don't worry about offending me. With a name like mine, I'm well past that.
Irvine Bell
My name is Irvine Bell. I live in Lytham St Annes, a small seaside town, near Blackpool, in Lancashire, England.
I have been interested in trolleybuses ever since I travelled to school on them [big red three axle 70 seat double deckers] in the late 1950s and early 1960s in London.
The London system, which at its peak had over 1,500 operational vehicles on over 250 miles of route, sadly closed in 1962. There has been some interest in trolleybuses returning to London recently, but nothing concrete in the way of proposals has yet materialised, or is probably likely to.
I worked for over 25 years as a R&D engineer and then as a computer professional for the Leyland truck and bus manufacturing company [known variously as Leyland Motors, British Leyland, Rover and latterly, Leyland DAF, during the time I was with them].
An enforced career change [redundancy - fortunately just before Leyland DAF went into Receivership] has lead me into the teaching profession. I now work in my local High School [11 to 18 years age range], teaching Advanced Level Computer Science and a range of other technology subjects.
I like to spend a lot of my Summer Sundays and Bank Holidays driving and conducting preserved trolleybuses at the Black Country Museum at Dudley, which is near Birmingham in the English Midlands [about a two and a half hour drive from where I live].
At Dudley, we have the longest British trolleybus route - about 1,200 yards! It is not much, but at least it gives the visiting public some idea of what the British trolleybus was like in its heyday. Comments by the visitors are generally very favourable many along the lines of 'Why did we ever get rid of them?'.
We are having a special event this Summer at Dudley, in late May / early June, with a number of visiting trolleybuses, including with a bit of luck, a London trolleybus - and a Leyland one at that!
The Black Country Museum has a web site at:
I worked as a hobby as a part time bus driver during the 1980s with Stagecoach Ribble, our local interurban bus operator. Unfortunately, deregulation of the British bus operating industry in 1986 eventually killed off the bulk of the evening and weekend services that I mostly worked on and eventually killed that particular hobby.
Don Galt:
I've held off from the autobiographical stuff, since I'm no fit source for rosters or Pullmans or Brills, and since the only thing I know about shoes is that it gets harder and harder to find comfortable ones.
However: I've lived the better part of my life, off and on, in a trolley city (Seattle), visited from childhood onward in another (Vancouver, since back when Cambie only ran to 29th, and Oak and Hastings still had streetcars) and am old enough to have known the etb's of Portland, Chicago and several other American and Canadian cities that no longer have them. Also of a number of cities in Europe. Also of four New Zealand cities (I challenge you to name more than three!) and four in Australia (not to mention the then-intact tramway systems of Brisbane and Ballarat - sorry, Richard, it just slipped out!)
Plus:
As a schoolboy I sent away all over N.America for transit maps. So I have maps of curbliners in Des Moines, the Bronson line in Ottawa, trackless trolleys in Wilmington. etc, etc. The transit map collecting long since levelled off but I have town plans of many, many of the cities of the world. Some old, some new.
So maybe I haven't thought much
about carbons since getting my first word processor, but when
it comes to maps ... go ahead, make my day!
This page last updated 13 JL 1999
