Who Remembers Trolley Buses,Particularly in Maidstone,Kent

[itpro007ca]

My Mum's sister just sent a DVD about Trolley Buses in Maidstone,Kent,UK.

This is the source.They have similar videos on other locations.Most are in PAL,NTSC,and SECAM.Of course,if you have a reigion free dvd player,none of that matters! lol

http://www.onlinevideo.me.uk (http://www.onlinevideo.me.uk)

I remember,when I lived in England as child,taking the bus to Maidstone from Gillingham to see Mum's parents and I was always fascinated by those Trolley Buses.

When I visited Bournemouth many years later,they had some also.

It's a shame these bus companies don't realize what a tourist attraction they are;instead swapping them for dirty Diesel jobs that polute the atmosphere!

They have a partial Trolley Bus/Tram network in Toronto,Ontario,Canada,where I lived for a few years back in the 1980s.

So...

Who remembers Trolley Buses?

Does anyone remember the Trolley Buses in Maidstone,Kent?

In fact,the crazy thing about eh video is a there's a short scene of man climbing into a bus to drive it -it's my Mum's father!

I first heard about it,indirectly through my mother.Then,recently asked my mother,to ask her sister if any more of those dvds were available,then I wrote and asked myself.She sent it to me!

There are trains on the video also.

[blackbird34]

They've got an awful lot of them in Lyon, France. They seem a lot heavier than the normal buses for some reason. Lyon's transport authority seems to have just taken all the forms of transport it could find and included them in their system: trams, metro (=subway), buses, bicycles....

[mips]

Before my time but we had them here in SA although we called them trams I think or we had trams & the busses from old pics I saw. I think there are still one or two touristy theme places where they operate.

[bob-linux-user]

I remember trolley busues in what I think must have been Southampton when i was very young in the late 1960's. In reply to a later poster, trolley buses are not to be confused with what we call trams in the UK. Trams ran on 2 rails like a single unit "train", trolley buses looked much like ordinary buses apart from the electrical tansmission equipment on the roof which took current from electrical lines running permanently above the streets and fed into electrical motors driving the wheels. Sometimes the driver would have to get out and using an insulated pole would transfer a line from one place to another, much like railway points. I hope I have remembered all this correctly it was quite a while ago now! I guess with modern health and safety standards if an engineer suggested anything like this now he would be taken outside and shot!

[Grenage]

Ahh, trams. There was talk of some being reintroduced around these parts, but nothing ever materialised.

[C.S.Cameron]

There are many trolley buses in use in Vancouver Canada.
Much less irritating to follow than a diesel bus.

Edit:
Except when a trolley pole comes off.

[Paqman]

They had (and AFAIK still have) trolley buses in Wellington, NZ. They're good, about the only problems with them were if inexperienced drivers took a cornet too fast and a pole jumped off the wires, and you'd get nasty interference on FM radio if following right behind them.

I think the main reason more towns don't switch is the cost involved in putting the infrastructure in. It can't be cheap to electrify all the routes, and the NIMBYs would moan about all the wires spoiling their view.

[lisati]

They had (and AFAIK still have) trolley buses in Wellington, NZ. They're good, about the only problems with them were if inexperienced drivers took a cornet too fast and a pole jumped off the wires, and you'd get nasty interference on FM radio if following right behind them.

I think the main reason more towns don't switch is the cost involved in putting the infrastructure in. It can't be cheap to electrify all the routes, and the NIMBYs would moan about all the wires spoiling their view.

Yes, Wellington still has trolley buses, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybuses_in_Wellington, which also has a cble car, http://www.wellingtoncablecar.co.nz (plenty of videos on Youtube), but trams stopped running there back in 1964.

Auckland used to have trolley buses, but haven't used them for many years. I remember riding on the Farmers Free Bus from Queen Street to their store a couple of blocks up the hill.

[mips]

In reply to a later poster, trolley buses are not to be confused with what we call trams in the UK. Trams ran on 2 rails like a single unit "train", trolley buses looked much like ordinary buses apart from the electrical tansmission equipment on the roof which took current from electrical lines running permanently above the streets and fed into electrical motors driving the wheels.

Yeah I used the terms incorrectly but we did have both though.

Here's a 10min video of Trolley Buses in Johannesburg, South Africa from 1973.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmX8rS-kg6U

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_trolleybus_systems#.C2.A0South_Africa Looks like the last of them ran in 1986.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybuses_in_Durban looks like we had the first trolley bus accident in the world.
http://www.jhmt.org.za/Exhibit_Photographs_trams_and_trolley_buses.htm
http://www.fad.co.za/Resources/transport/transport.htm Close to where I live.

[ExPat58]

My Mum's sister just sent a DVD about Trolley Buses in Maidstone,Kent,UK.

This is the source.They have similar videos on other locations.Most are in PAL,NTSC,and SECAM.Of course,if you have a reigion free dvd player,none of that matters! lol

http://www.onlinevideo.me.uk (http://www.onlinevideo.me.uk)

I remember,when I lived in England as child,taking the bus to Maidstone from Gillingham to see Mum's parents and I was always fascinated by those Trolley Buses.

When I visited Bournemouth many years later,they had some also.

It's a shame these bus companies don't realize what a tourist attraction they are;instead swapping them for dirty Diesel jobs that polute the atmosphere!

They have a partial Trolley Bus/Tram network in Toronto,Ontario,Canada,where I lived for a few years back in the 1980s.

So...

Who remembers Trolley Buses?

Does anyone remember the Trolley Buses in Maidstone,Kent?

In fact,the crazy thing about eh video is a there's a short scene of man climbing into a bus to drive it -it's my Mum's father!

I first heard about it,indirectly through my mother.Then,recently asked my mother,to ask her sister if any more of those dvds were available,then I wrote and asked myself.She sent it to me!

There are trains on the video also.
My name is Les and I was a conductor for The Maidstone Transport Department in the early 1950's and I was mainly on the diesel buses, but I did do some shifts on the trolley busses.

If you want a good DVD about the Maidstone Trolley Buses get a copy of No Trolley To Loose, it covers the final days of the trolley buses in Maidstone.

I hope that You can locate a copy, thanks to the internet and Google there is such a lot that one can research on Maidstone transport from the past.

[lisati]

In reply to a later poster, trolley buses are not to be confused with what we call trams in the UK. Trams ran on 2 rails like a single unit "train", trolley buses looked much like ordinary buses apart from the electrical tansmission equipment on the roof which took current from electrical lines running permanently above the streets and fed into electrical motors driving the wheels.
Thank you for clarifying. I believe that the vehicles you and I know as "trams" are known as "trolley cars" or "streetcars" in some places. :D

[Artemis3]

Well check here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_bus

Not only there are many still in operation around the world, there have been new deployments, such as this (Merida, Venezuela):

http://andes.net/images/trolebus.jpg

If you get away from the catenary, a diesel engine starts (hybrid). I'm sure many modern types are the same.

[Futant]

We got trams in Manchester...

[fyfe54]

I remember trams and trolley buses in Glasgow. Then they were replaced by noisy and dirty diesel buses. What a mess.

Now I'm in the US and there is a move to "light rail". Looks a lot like trams to me, but they run in sets of 2-4.

[Statia]

The city of Arnhem (of "A Bridge Too Far" fame) in the east of The Netherlands, close to the German border, also still uses trolley buses.

[itpro007ca]

My name is Les and I was a conductor for The Maidstone Transport Department in the early 1950's and I was mainly on the diesel buses, but I did do some shifts on the trolley busses.

If you want a good DVD about the Maidstone Trolley Buses get a copy of No Trolley To Loose, it covers the final days of the trolley buses in Maidstone.

I hope that You can locate a copy, thanks to the internet and Google there is such a lot that one can research on Maidstone transport from the past.

Hi Les:

That's EXACTLY the DVD my Mum's sister(lives up Shepway,in Maidstone)sent me!

"No More Trolley Buses To Loose",I think is the correct title.I lent to mother,so she can hopefully find her Dad the second time with his bus at Parkwood(her brother says he's on it twice,but we could only find him once!).

In fact,at 23:50+,it has her and my Mum's Dad climbing into a Bus!

Maybe you even knew him!? Albert "Chic" Hayes?

Richard
ps:Have fond memories of riding on them when I was a boy in Gillignham,Kent on those occasional Maidstone trips.