Anybody for trolleybuses ?

[FleetlinePhil]

I forgot to mention the Bournemouth trolleybus turntable. Yes, railways weren't the only places where turntables were installed ! Having said that the number of places on trolleybus networks was very small. The turntable at Bournemouth was actually installed at the end of the route to Christchurch. I once saw it as a child, but only decades later did I go to look for it to find it had been preserved. It's now part of the car park for a block of flats built on the site of the hotel that used to stand there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christchu ... _turntable

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=bourn ... UWsY13KACM:

I tried to have a look at the Christchurch turntable whilst on holiday in August, only to find the car park was securely gated off due to building work! I visited Bournemouth as a child in 1968, so the trolleybuses were still running, but I don't believe I was taken on one.

The other turntable in the UK was at Longwood on the NW side of Huddersfield, although apparently it was not used from 1940 onwards. I would be interested to know what the "alternative arrangements" mentioned in the Wiipedia article were. I definitely did travel on the Huddersfield system at least once, as my Mum had family there that she and I visited by pulic transport during school holidays occasionally.

[Truvelo]

Can anyone tell me what the tolerance is for keeping the bus under the wires? Clearly driver error could result in the bus veering off course and the pantograph coming off the wires. I assume a bus could deviate off course slightly to avoid parked cars etc.

[Ruperts Trooper]

Can anyone tell me what the tolerance is for keeping the bus under the wires? Clearly driver error could result in the bus veering off course and the pantograph coming off the wires. I assume a bus could deviate off course slightly to avoid parked cars etc.

A pantograph presumably has much less latitude than poles on a swivel - In Derby, probably the others too, each trolley bus had a re-hitching pole stored along one side of the lower deck.

[Isleworth1961]

Can anyone tell me what the tolerance is for keeping the bus under the wires? Clearly driver error could result in the bus veering off course and the pantograph coming off the wires. I assume a bus could deviate off course slightly to avoid parked cars etc.

One of the main reasons for moving over from trams to trolleybuses, apart from renewal of track and maintenance, at the tramway's expense, of the strip of road between the rails and either side, was their ability to pass round roadside obstructions and pull over to the side of the road.Trolleybuses could move quite a long way to either side of the wires, but sometimes the arms came off, occasionally damaging the wires, and sometimes the arms got bent if they swung round and hit a pole. Most trolleybuses carried a bamboo pole underneath to allow the crew to get back on the juice. There's a couple of Youtube videos of the first London United trolleybuses in action on the first day of operation demonstrating their manouvrability.

[fras]

Can anyone tell me what the tolerance is for keeping the bus under the wires? Clearly driver error could result in the bus veering off course and the pantograph coming off the wires. I assume a bus could deviate off course slightly to avoid parked cars etc.

One of the MOT tests for trolleybus drivers was "negotiate curves without dewiring". Essentially the driver needs to position the vehicle so it is moving along a greater radius than the overhead wires, i.e the poles are tending to the inside of the curve. Of course, most installations set the wires above the road so this would happen without the driver having to think about it.

No pantographs on trolleybuses BTW, they use two trolley poles. Pantographs were only used on tramways and railways. Some tramway systems used bow collectors, a simpler system to a pantograph. Glasgow used them, but Sunderland used the pantograph so was quite modern for a traditional system. Bow collectors are not as sophisticated as pantographs but OK at the speeds most tramways attained at the time.

[fras]

Just to say I made a few small edits to the "trolleybuses" section in the Wiki. Nothing controversial.

[c2R]

Just to say I made a few small edits to the "trolleybuses" section in the Wiki. Nothing controversial.

I've seen, and I'd encourage anyone else with information to do the same - there aren't enough of us wiki administrators to act in the role of conservators and cataloguers of all the information on the forums - I've linked the talk page of the article to the thread (as I do with many article's talk pages) so that in future people can get back to our discussions, but even better would be to put the information on the wiki page and any areas of contention then can be discussed in the linked thread!

Thanks again,
Chris

[fras]

Just to say I made a few small edits to the "trolleybuses" section in the Wiki. Nothing controversial.

I've seen, and I'd encourage anyone else with information to do the same - there aren't enough of us wiki administrators to act in the role of conservators and cataloguers of all the information on the forums - I've linked the talk page of the article to the thread (as I do with many article's talk pages) so that in future people can get back to our discussions, but even better would be to put the information on the wiki page and any areas of contention then can be discussed in the linked thread!

Thanks again,
Chris

If I click on the Wiki link in this forum, I go straight there and can view and, indeed, make updates. However, when I just go to the Wiki on entry to SABRE it's not there. Am I looking in the wrong place ?

[c2R]

If I click on the Wiki link in this forum, I go straight there and can view and, indeed, make updates. However, when I just go to the Wiki on entry to SABRE it's not there. Am I looking in the wrong place ?

So, if you go to the wiki, you should end up on the main contents page for the wiki, here:
https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/wiki/ind ... =Main_Page

If you search for Trolleybus, Trolleybus System, or Trolleybus system you should be taken straight to the page. It is also on the "Road basics" infobox, so if you're on many pages you'll see it under the public transport section.

We probably need to make it easier to navigate to it from the main page.. some of the navigation isn't obvious, which is something we know we need to do better at as the content on the wiki grows.

Cheers
Chris

[fras]

If I click on the Wiki link in this forum, I go straight there and can view and, indeed, make updates. However, when I just go to the Wiki on entry to SABRE it's not there. Am I looking in the wrong place ?

So, if you go to the wiki, you should end up on the main contents page for the wiki, here:
https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/wiki/ind ... =Main_Page

If you search for Trolleybus, Trolleybus System, or Trolleybus system you should be taken straight to the page. It is also on the "Road basics" infobox, so if you're on many pages you'll see it under the public transport section.

We probably need to make it easier to navigate to it from the main page.. some of the navigation isn't obvious, which is something we know we need to do better at as the content on the wiki grows.

Cheers
Chris

Many thanks.
Perhaps it should be within "other road features" along with trams too, I would think. Overhead for trams and trolleybuses, plus tramtracks, of course, are very prominent road features. All the new tram systems installed in the 1990s and subsequently, do have significant mileages of street running, (a great joy for tramway buffs like me !!).

[fras]

Just thought I'd post this up for discussion.

http://www.metro-report.com/news/news-b ... egins.html

Not a trolleybus because it has no trolleys but it does have a pantograph ! Clearly in operational use, access to the charging points is crucial, and also I suspect there must be sufficient battery charge to cover congestion, because whilst the battery will not be used for traction in a traffic jam, in winter it will certainly be powering heaters, and one thing we do know about Norway is that it does get cold there. Interesting that it says the battery can be charged in 7-8 minutes. I suspect the vehicles are very costly, being a new concept, but with no need for any overhead, just a few charging points, the traction power infrastructure may work out cheaper, hence the cost of system operation could compare favourably with trolleybuses.

[Pendlemac]

Just thought I'd post this up for discussion.

http://www.metro-report.com/news/news-b ... egins.html

Not a trolleybus because it has no trolleys but it does have a pantograph !

If you mean the bus on route 60 then I think there is an error in the article text and the bus is charged by an inverted pantograph on the stop.

My reason for saying this is that in the image of the bus on route 60 shows two sets of orange wires running down the pantograph arm. As these do not appear to have a break in them the pantograph cannot be coming up from the bus. Similar wires are shown in the image of the structure above the bus on route 74 which the article says uses an inverted pantograph system.

[FleetlinePhil]

I must admit I had always assumed the pantograph was on the vehicle, but some systems do indeed run with an inverted pantograph coming down from the charger:
https://chargedevs.com/features/the-ine ... ric-buses/
About halfway through the article is a picture of the roof structure of a vehicle using an inverted pantograph system.
With the flexibility and relative economy of this sort of system, it is hard to see many places stringing miles of wire over the streets to create new conventional trolleybus networks, you would think.

[fras]

Yes, it does see to be attractive, but attention then must focus on the battery packs. As I understand it, the operators of the Rome system have found the batteries not to be as long-lived as originally thought. These packs are very expensive and if you have a fleet of buses all needing battery packs every two years at £20k a pop, the alternative of overhead wiring could be attractive.

Article here (albeit biased towards trolleybuses)

http://www.tbus.org.uk/battery.htm

[mark3evo]

SYT had a prototype system in Doncaster during the 1980's had about 2 miles running along the race course

Then in someone's infinite wisdom
It was scrapped probably due to the New Sheffield Tram system planned

Pity that

[fras]

Found this very recent item on battery trolleybuses for Opava in the Czech Republic.

http://www.metro-report.com/news/news-b ... igned.html

In fact there does seem quite a lot going on in the Czech Republic on electric buses. I also found a video of the Opava system

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYIcKr6zahM

It is of interest for the seamless frog switching for route changes, and also there are a couple of sequences showing a trolleybus rewiring itself having run into the stop with the trolleys down. The trolleys in Rome do similar. Other thing is the overhead does not appear intrusive due to use of hangers off buildings. Early on there is also a sequence showing a trolleybus moving out from a stop to get round what looks like the wiring gang truck. I was just waiting for a de-wire but two drivers managed it perfectly albeit at a crawl

[FleetlinePhil]

Speaking of the Czech Republic, the trolleybus system in Hradec Kralove had some unusual wiring at the terminal near the railway station. It was difficult to get a picture safely, but the span wires around a roundabout were all linked to the white metal ring visible above the centre of the roundabout. It all looked fairly recently installed, although the system dates from 1949. It's not a huge system, as the city only has a population of around 90,000.

[FleetlinePhil]

Yes, it does see to be attractive, but attention then must focus on the battery packs. As I understand it, the operators of the Rome system have found the batteries not to be as long-lived as originally thought. These packs are very expensive and if you have a fleet of buses all needing battery packs every two years at £20k a pop, the alternative of overhead wiring could be attractive.

Article here (albeit biased towards trolleybuses)

http://www.tbus.org.uk/battery.htm

An interesting article, thank you. I think it is fair to assume battery packs will continue to get more efficient and cheaper, though by how much is debatable. The first trolleybus overhead to be installed, were it to happen in the UK, would no doubt come at a horrendous price - hopefully economies of scale would kick in if it were to become a more widespread process. Of course, the same could be said of the vehicles themselves.
The article makes an interesting point about in-service recharging, which is how much layover is needed at the end of a route. Commercial pressures in the UK mean layover tends to be as short as possible in most cases, and as the article rightly points out, it can't be skimped on if you are running late when your bus is due a recharge.
The scenario I had in mind was that of a large market town, or perhaps even small city, with a small network of shortish routes running perhaps every 10-30 minutes from a central bus station. If one or two charging points could be provided there, buses could drop off service to recharge, which would not be a major problem if the peak vehicle requirement was higher than the off-peak (yes, that is a big "if" these days). The bus operator would have the cachet of removing diesel vehicles from the historic town centre, which hopefully the local authority would have made some financial contribution towards achieving.
As for installing conventional trolleybuses, I don't know if there is a particular headway on a route that would be regarded as the tipping point where it becomes worthwhile? I would have thought a 10 minute headway might be the minimum required, but outside Greater London, it is relatively rare now to find single bus routes more frequent than this. Of course, if it is too tight a headway, you run the risk of the service bunching, and the inability to overtake then becomes an issue. Length of the route must also come into play, and the topography - I have always believed trolleybuses come into their own in hilly areas, but perhaps this was just comparing them with the performance of diesel buses in the 1950's-60's.

[fras]

Couple of YouTube videos of Arnhem trolleys

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zu2tCNXMef0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYiykv_aCco

Just look at the way those trolleys negotiate the complex overhead at the bus station, and no crawling under junctions either. Truly the modern trolleybus can more than hold its own in traffic if the infrastructure is right.

[FleetlinePhil]

Couple of YouTube videos of Arnhem trolleys

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zu2tCNXMef0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYiykv_aCco

Just look at the way those trolleys negotiate the complex overhead at the bus station, and no crawling under junctions either. Truly the modern trolleybus can more than hold its own in traffic if the infrastructure is right.

Very impressive, although the overhead is, in my view, very visually intrusive. I have fond memories of a Chartered Institute of Transport study tour to the Netherlands in 1983, the first stop on which was Arnhem. We were given a guided tour of the depot and offices before a trip out to the Open Air Museum at the north end of route 3. No artics back then, but they proudly showed off a new delivery which had a VW 1600 diesel fitted to keep the traction batteries charged to give it more flexibility off the wires. My gut feeling is that the network wasn't as big then as now, but I might be wrong on that. Incidentally, whilst not being exactly hilly, Arnhem's location in the Rhine valley means it is not as dead-level as many Dutch cities, which perhaps favours trolleybuses.