The Forgotten
Trolleybuses
The Forgotten
Trolleybuses
It is sometimes forgotten that there were three trolleybus systems in
the West Midlands. Walsall and Wolverhampton had extensive systems
and there are two vehicles running at the Black Country Museum as a
reminder, but nothing whatsoever survives of the first system in the
Midlands - Birmingham.
Birmingham was unique in many ways, it was the first system to replace
a tram route with trolleybuses and the first to abandon after the war.
It also was the only post-war system where the trams outlived the
trolleybuses (while it is claimed to be the only system to do this,
Aberdare's Cedes-Stoll trolleybuses ceased in 1925, 10 years before their last
tram, and the tramways were actually extended
over two former trolleybus routes as a final twist).
Birmingham also retained the trolleywheel collectors while all the
other post-war systems changed to the carbon insert. They did try
them, but the manager objected to the marks left by the wet carbon
that drops off the trolley heads in wet weather and were very noticeable
on the cream paintwork. Incidentally, Walsall's General Manager, R.
Edgeley Cox, solved this problem by having the trolleybooms mounted
further back, so the deposits dropped onto the street behind the bus.
The first route was the Nechells tram route. The track was in very
poor repair and the cost of relaying it for what was then a rather
low used service was considered too much. The service was officially
an experiment, but as the tracks were taken up before the service
started, there was no intention to go back to trams. Birmingham was
strange in that the motorbus routes were all numbered starting again
from 1, thus duplicating the numbers of the tram routes. The Nechells
route stayed numbered as 7. No wiring was
ever put up to the depot and the buses travelled to and from Washwood
Heath using the tramway overhead and a trailing skate in the track.
The buses were re-poled onto a short stretch of wiring where there
were no tracks and then again onto the proper service wires - there
was no overhead pointwork (or frogs as they are usually called) on
the Nechells route. Trams from Washwood Heath used bow collectors and
so, even if it were possible at that time, it would have been too
expensive to put up suitable wiring to the depot. The original
vehicles were tall and narrow like the city's trams and had hand
controllers. They were popular with the passengers as the usage of
the route increased by 50%. The fleet was expanded with various
demonstrators (none of which lasted very long) and the only
trolleybus ever built by the EMB company of West Bromwich, this only
lasted 2 years before being returned to EMB and then was quietly
broken up, followed by 4 vehicles similar to the original Railless.
The last of these had a foot controller, which was rather strange as
it was a replacement for a vehicle shown at a commercial exhibition
that was rejected for having a foot controller.
When the Railless buses were due for replacement (they had remained
fitted with solid tyres throughout), Birmingham bought Leyland
trolleybuses (TBD1) which were based on the TD1 motorbus. The bodies
fitted to these was the same as the motor buses, even including a
dummy radiator in front of the electrical equipment. These vehicles
looked just like a motorbus with poles on the roof. Unfortunately, the
first one failed the tilt test and so the destination blind winding
equipment and the headlights were removed and the seating capacity upstairs
was reduced by one. Paper stickers were stuck on the inside of the destination
display. The one pictured here has the paper sticker reading "NECHELLS"
rather than the blind (which read "NECHELLS 7"), but has had the headlamps
restored. They were followed
by Leyland 6-wheelers as Birmingham wanted to try out large capacity
trolleybuses with a view to perhaps further conversions.
In 1934, the Coventry Road tramway was replaced by trolleybuses,
using high capacity 6 wheelers. The decision had been taken two years
earlier, but within weeks the Conference of Rail and Road Transport chaired
by Sir Arthur Salter was set up by the Chancellor and came up with a proposal
to increase the licence duty on trolleybuses from £96 to £554. This meant the
conversion was put on hold and when the Budget of 1933 made no mention of the
recommendations of the Salter Committee, the conversion finally
went ahead with 50 6 wheel Leylands. Some 4 wheelers were also purchased
later (for the Lode Lane extension). The route was extended twice,
once to serve the expanding suburbs and then again to the Lode Lane
Rover works. This latter extension was done in the first years of the
war and was a branch of the main route. As there were two different
termini at the city end there were several variants and 10 different
route numbers were used. The buses had the typical "Birmingham" look,
with the cobalt blue and cream livery and the two mouldings between
the upper and lower deck windows to carry the two cobalt blue
bands.
In 1937, West Bromwich Corporation, who were due to take over the
section of tramway on the Dudley and Wednesbury routes on expiry of
the lease on the section of the track in the borough, proposed
trolleybuses. They got as far as rebuilding Oak Lane garage to be
trolleybus garage, but before they could order the vehicles and put
up the depot wiring, Birmingham refused to allow any trolleybuses to
enter the city on that route. West Bromwich reluctantly acceded to their
demands and the joint operation commenced in 1939 using motor buses. The
anti-trolleybus lobby had finally stamped their mark.
The end of the Nechells route came in 1940. As the skate used for
depot journeys caused flashes, it fell foul of the blackout
regulations and the vehicles were put in storage, with a temporary
bus service to cover. Unfortunately, due to wartime shortages, the
wires were removed, bit by bit, to make good damaged overhead
elsewhere and by the end of the war it had been decided that the
trams and trolleybuses were to go. The end came in 1951, with no
public ceremony and two years before the last trams. In their
coverage of the event, the Birmingham Evening Post claimed that
Birmingham was the first municipality to operate trolleybuses, which
it most certainly wasn't, this having actually been Leeds closely followed by
Bradford some eleven years before Birmingham. As the replacement buses were smaller and
slower (and noisier), this wasn't very popular with the passengers.
Some stops had to be removed as trolleybuses, with their superior
acceleration, could easily cope with frequent stops but the motor buses couldn't.
Birmingham was never enthusiastic about trolleybuses and at the end became quite
hostile toward them, an attitude that they took with them when they
effectively became the West Midlands PTE and killed off the Walsall
system - an act of sheer vandalism.
Unfortunately Birmingham's end came long before the preservation movement
really got going. Only one ex-demonstrator survives and that was
converted to a motorbus on leaving Birmingham (the body being put on a motorbus
chassis, it is believed, though the original TBD1 chassis was a modified TD1 motorbus chassis),
unlike most of the other demonstrators it was never
painted in the city's livery. It is pictured here at Wisley Airfield in April 2005 at the
Cobham Museum Rally. After conversion, it ran in Jersey for many years.
None of the city's own fleet survived, not even the unique EMB, which
was years ahead of its time, having a low floor, level platform and fully
enclosed staircase. Rumours abound that there is one of the original railless stuck in a back yard
somewhere, but sadly these have never been substantiated. It wasn't uncommon for tram bodies to
be purchased for use as summer houses or holiday homes and certainly at least two of
Wolverhampton's 1923 trolleybuses ended up as such, so it is within the bounds of belief
that one could have survived. However, it seems that it is very unlikely that any of them did.
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