Touring electric coach stranded at Eden Project after failing to find charging point in Cornwall

[charles]

you could also put pennies (real, old fashioned ones) across the gap and collect nicely bent ones after the tram had passed.

[Jim GM4DHJ ...]

haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa the future doesn't work

[Dave Plowman (News]

That's likely why TFL don't seem to have any pure EV buses.

[Robin]

?

"More than 400 all-electric buses have been introduced - including the UK's first full routes of electric double decker buses - and around 300 additional zero-emission buses are expected to join the fleet by the end of this year.

TfL continues to roll out electric buses, with routes including 106, C10 and P5 converting last year, and there are plans for 2,000 all-electric buses to be in operation by 2025."

even back in Sept 2019 there were 200+ in operation

[williamwright]

We used the East Coast Main Line for that. We also used to lean down between two bridges that were only a foot apart and tap the phone lines!

Bill

[Scion]

Were you on one when you typed that?

[JNugent]

That's more of a light railway system, largely running on its own segregated route. I've crossed it a few times.

[JNugent]

Couldn't all that that be part of the vehicle, with a simple cable running out to a 13A plug (at least for emergencies where such a supply is going to be the absolute best available)?

[JNugent]

Even though there were none in my home town and environs, I remember those features (and their place in popular culture).

But the trolley bus could still only go where the wires went. It couldn't detour round a road closure, for instance.

[Chris J Dixon]

Some of them were equipped with "Battery Manoeuvring", which allowed them short moves away from the wires.

There were also what were effectively large jump leads that could be used in extremis.

I was once told that, a long while ago, a team were towing a trolleybus to Crich, and stopped at a services, parking out of the way at the far end of the lorry area. One guy stayed in the cab to keep guard, whilst the others took the towing vehicle nearer the services.

Along came a police car, the occupants came over for a chat. After a while the trolley driver remarked "I suppose you are going to ask me to move along?"

"Yes", they replied.

He selected "Battery Manoeuvring", and pulled forward a couple of metres, much to the astonishment of the officers.

Chris

[Theo]

That's what vehicles already have - it's called 'AC charging'. AC chargers go up to about 22kW.

But they won't do half a megawatt (or more commonly 50-150kW). The power supply for those is a DC fast charger and it's a large liquid-cooled cabinet filled with AC to variable-voltage DC converters - see the Supercharger link in my other post. You wouldn't want to lug that around, and nor would you want to plug into the kV AC grid to charge up.

(charging this coach at 22kW would have taken 12 hours, and 100 hours at a

13A socket. Perhaps unsurprisingly that's not really feasible at a public charge point)

Theo

[Mike Clarke]

That would have been unnecessarily complicated. The simpler approach was for the conductor of the broken down bus to pull down the pickup arms with his long bamboo pole and park them under the retaining hooks on the roof. Other trolleybuses could then simply drive round the broken down one.

[Steve Walker]

And there's no reason that they couldn't have large enough batteries that they could travel many miles off the wires for major diversions or to extend routes to places without wires.

[Dave Plowman (News]

No doubt used on very short routes as round here they are all diesel or hybrid. I'd be most surprised if total EV is possible on most routes, considering the number of hours and miles a bus covers each day.

[Dave Plowman (News]

Think they could all could move on internal batteries. For in the garage, if nowhere else. Can you imagine the 'plumbing' needed to park them up with only overhead power?

[Tim+]

And did they? I?m guessing that they probably didn?t and that there is a reason that you haven?t thought of. Battery weight, cost, etc?

Tim

[Chris J Dixon]

Having worked with engineers who had first hand knowledge, the information I have is that "Battery Manoeuvring" was an optional extra.

If they could manage to handle tramcars...

Chris

[charles]

It doesn't have to be the same bus all day.

[Robin]

Sorry but I do doubt it. Eg all-electric double deckers run on route 23

- 9 miles from Hammersmith to Westbourne Park. I'd say that's middling long for central London since the big changes in the early 1990s which split many of the routes through the centre worked by garages at opposite sides.

[Paul]

"In addition provision is usually made, on vehicles for service in Great Britain, for emergency operation from the lighting battery, the ampere-hour capacity of which is increased for this purpose. The battery is arranged in two sections (each either 24 or 36 V) which are normally connected in parallel (for lighting and charging) but may be connected in series when emergency pro- pulsion is required. A change-over switch is therefore necessary together with a contactor (controlled by a foot-operated switch) for connecting the battery directly to the motor (which operates on its series field winding without starting rheostats)."

So part of the reason for having the feature, was that the battery was there for emergency lighting during mains power failure, and the vehicle would not be a safety hazard on a dark road. There would also be interior lighting.

I can also find mention of the buses having motor-generator sets for conversion of overhead voltages to other voltages or powering schemes. You could start with 800VDC on overhead wires, and even make three phase AC for the motor, using a motor-generator set. Rather than SMPS, they had their ways at the time, for solving problems like that. Although at a significant weight penalty at a guess.

Paul