No there were junctions/points. The conductor got off the bus and pulled a handle to get the trollies to move to the desired route. (S)he had a whistle to tell the driver when to move.
Some junctions were automatic. The were lights on the pole indicating which way the "points" were set. They could be manually overidden if wrong.
No more than trams. A broken down trolley bus was just unhooked from the wires and others could pass, not the case with trams.
The best laugh I saw was when a West Indian driving a trolley bus tried to overtake another.
Frost and ice on the wires could be spectacular.
They ran on 660Vdc with mercury-in-glass arc rectifiers. I helped move some once.
London trolleybuses could move on battery power if the line power failed. They couldn't move very far, and I guess the battery would have been NiFe or possibly lead-acid. I'm not sure where these were on the trolleybus but they would have been pretty heavy, so maybe that's a possible reason for a double axle.
Certianly the Edinburgh trams just continued round a junction. No stopping involved
There were various methods for busier junctions starting in the tram era when track points as well as overhead frogs had to be switched, As you mentioned Edinburgh here is a photo of a chap who was permanently stationed at an intersection and switched from a control cabinet, often the bloke was a person who had been disabled in WW1 and came back unable to do what he had been doing before but as long as he had one leg to stand on and and one arm to work the controls could work.
GH
Probably for the same reason as in London. By the 1930s, the tram tracks wre seriously in need of replacement but the electrics were still good, so it was more cost effective to scrap the trams and replace them with trolleybuses.
By the later 50s, the electrics werre past their best and in need of replacement.
Again it was more cost effective to scrap them and replace them with ordinary buses - in the case of London, new Routemasters.
I was just going to write something similar but, fortunately, I read further on and found you'd saved me the trouble!
Or not, as the case may be.
The East London Transit was heralded as a new scheme to reintroduce (modern) trams between Ilford and Barking and extend to the new Barking Riverside development area.
Then they decided, after all the fuss, hoohah and public exhibitions that it would cost too much and the system was downgraded to trolleybuses.
Time passed and it was decided that thsat would be too expensive too - so the new East London Transit, which mostly replaced existing bus routes - was eventually launched using ...
... buses!
Not so.
Take a look at the pictures and descriptions here:
How are they going to be any more expensive than overhead wiring for trams?
Also: an advantage trollies have is they can (albeit with a little inconvenience), overtake one another. Try that with a tram.
Trams only need a single wire, as compared to the two of a trolley bus. That makes them simpler, particularly at junctions, thus more reliable and cheaper to maintain. However, the real difference is the economics of the two types of transport. A modern tram can carry more than 200 people. That, along with the cost of the infrastructure, means that they are only used on high passenger volume routes, which are more profitable and can thus bear high overheads (no pun intended). Buses are more suited to routes with lower passenger volumes, where one bus every five minutes to an hour is sufficient. There are trolley buses that can carry up to 180 people, but they are too long to be legal on UK public roads. That means they need dedicated roadways, which makes them more like trams without the cost of laying rails.
The alternative to trolley buses today is the diesel hybrid bus. The city of Seattle estimated a 20% saving in annual maintenance costs by replacing trolley buses with them.
Not always, which is why I said can, rather than will. There has to be room for the next bus to pass. I have seen a trolley bus broken down alongside building works that required it to be well out into the road. The pickup arms on the following trolley buses simply weren't long enough to reach the wires while passing it.
Broken down trams can usually be cleared by coupling up the following tram and running them as a coupled pair.
One of my earliest memories is of standing with my father on the rear platform of a tram playing with drivers non functioning controls at that end. When they got to the end of the line they didn't turn around the driver just moved to the other end. Also the passengers seat backs could be flipped over to suit the direction of travel.
On the bus route from Belfast to Bangor there was a very low railway bridge so that route had special double decker buses with lowered roofs. They managed this by making the upstairs seats long banquettes. Access was by a lowered section of floor at one end. This lowered floor was above the heads of the seats in the down stairs on that side of the bus so didn't cause too much obstruction.
The main difference electrically was some trams had pantographs instead of a pole. This simplified the overhead arrangements.
The coolest one must be the wet tram...because that is essentially what it was.
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