#trolleybuses

London Transport Museum Depot

The London Transport Museum in Covent Garden is a popular (and expensive) tourist attraction. Less well-known is the Museum’s depot, located next to Acton Town station in West London. It holds much of the collection not on display at the main location – over 370,000 items ranging from huge to tiny.

Among the larger items are of course many examples of old London Underground stock, some over 80 years old, their maroon exteriors and dark wood interiors feeling somewhat grander than the more sterile white and grey commuters receive today. There are also old buses, taxis and double-decker trams.

Hidden away upstairs are two climate-controlled rooms: one houses the artwork collection, including the first painting created for an Underground advert, and one of Henry Beck’s original Tube maps. The other contains a treasure trove of vintage posters covering over a century of propaganda and publicising. Yet another upstairs space is crammed full of old station signage (including signs from famous ghost station Aldwych) and pre-Beck maps, plus a case filled with the Johnstone typeface printing blocks.

The depot is not normally open to the public; there are two or three open weekends a year, or guided tours of select parts of the collection take place on certain days each month.

Trolleybuses and Urban Pollution

I reported on MP John Redwood’s thoughts on controlling urban pollution on the 20th April.  In recent years, many cities have returned to the previously old fashioned idea of electric trams.  These are good, but have the disadvantage that they need a lot of disruptive and expensive infrastructure.  The city of Nottingham is an excellent example of this.

Another “old fashioned” approach is the trolleybus, which does not need rails and hence is much cheaper and easier to install.  The first of the pictures above shows a London trolleybus before the system was finally withdrawn in 1962.  I remember riding on them.  They were very quiet and virtually free of pollution at the place of operation. 

Each vehicle had a crew of two: the driver and the conductor.  The latter was responsible for collecting fares, public safety and replacing the electric connection when it fell off the wires, which was a frequent occurence.  They were therefore equipped with a very long pole and it could take several minutes to reconnect the electric supply with this pole.

I was going to conclude that, if this problem could be solved, the trolleybus would be a major part of the answer to urban pollution.  However, on searching for photographs, I found several modern versions, including one from Naples (please see the second picture above).  If you have any experience of modern trolleybuses, please share them here.

Where are the world's trolleybus systems located?