Trolley Buses - any enthusiast?

[The Natural Philosopher]

Irrelevant

[Tim Streater]

The Swiss did all those, too. It was their policy.

[The Natural Philosopher]

It is network rails policy too when not being overridden by boys playing with Europe wide train sets.

[John]

A rope would need to be very slack to allow for the sideways movement of the trolley poles when maneovering.

[Chris J Dixon]

No, the poles are a fixed length. There is lots of info on this page:

and the top of this page has some old Brecknell Willis blueprints.

Chris

[Andy Burns]

That's ok, it'll mean they can be fusion-powered by the time they arrive :-P

[Andrew]

A heater was a £12(?) 'optional extra' on the notchback Anglia 105E in 1962.

Rusted rear spring hangers after about 5 years in warm, humid coastside areas were 'mandatory'. :-(

[Andrew]

Like keeping the fuckwits in their reliant robins off the roads.

[harry]

In Huddersfield, some were manual and others moved automatically There was a little box with lights on indicating how they were set. Could be manually overridden.

[harry]

The poles were very long. A buss could easily drive on the "wrong" side of the road.

[harry]

They had no doors so there was no heat. It would have been pointless.

[harry]

Well there was free heat in an ICE bus.

[Paul]

Ours had doors. And in winter, it got plenty cold. You needed the heat.

I don't think I ever saw ours broken down though. The poles would come off the lines regularly, but it only takes a minute or two to put them back. Whereas the modern diesel ones, you see them being towed all the time. There was less to go wrong with the electrics.

Paul

[charles]

Trmas of that era, being double ended, had open platforms at both ends. No heating.

[Paul]

If you did that here, the victims would be frozen to their seats :-)

Toronto has a pretty long history with various forms of this. I thought they may have had one that was more open at one time, but don't see a picture here of such.

In the maintenance shop, they even have a blacksmith, with a hearth, an anvil, and he makes tools and parts (things that would be hard to replace otherwise). He might be retired by now, but was probably training up someone to follow in his footsteps. There was a video of this on the news here a few years back.

And you can kinda see how they ended up with a blacksmith. At one time, their cars were hauled by horses. The blacksmith back then probably made horseshoes :-) The question would be, whether they tried to run that system in winter. The traction on the road might not be the best. The picture is from 1890.

Of course a person could dress warmly enough for that, but it wouldn't exactly be convenient. There would always be someone to whine about the experience.

Paul

[Simon T]

There's actually a Trolleybus Museum in Sandtoft, North Lincolnshire.

Might be worth a day out, when it re-opens after lockdown?

[harry]

Trolley buses don't have rails.

[Paul]

The Toronto collection is good, just to see how often they went with an open concept. And only the horse drawn one looked open. The others are all enclosed.

Our (not-in-Toronto) trolleys did not travel on rails and they had rubber tires. And had two overhead pickups for electric power. And as far as I know, had electric heating. You could not keep a windshield clear in winter, without some heat.

And the electric motor would make a smell, like the smell of porridge, when the operator "floored" the thing on a street with a slope. The bus had no problem with such a slope, but a smell would waft up through the floorboards, indicating something was getting warm :-) Perhaps that smell was selenium rectifiers ?

Paul

[AnthonyL]

Do some trigonometry.

[John]

Simon T [e-mail] wrote in news:rclsod$8q0$ [e-mail]:

Will do.