British Trolleybuses - Reading

Image: © Alan Murray-Rust Taken: 30 Mar 1966

A trolleybus turns at the Three Tuns terminus of route 17. This is the main Wokingham Road at its junction with Holme Road. Doing what amounts to a U-turn in the middle of an A road seems an unlikely manoeuvre, but was taken for granted in those days. Remarkably, this turn is still carried out today, with the service still operating every 7 or 8 minutes! Of particular interest is the Police emergency call telephone in the foreground. Note also the string of lamps attached to the overhead wires. These were specifically installed to enable drivers of trolleybuses to position themselves correctly under the wires during fog. There was little room for error at this location, and getting things wrong would result in the poles leaving the wires, cutting off the power to the trolleybus. Fishing around in a thick Thames Valley fog to find the errant poles and reposition them on the wires was not an easy job! The building to the left is the Wokingham Road Fire Station. For a slide show of British Trolleybuses in the late 60s http://www.geograph.org.uk/search.php?i=1773236&displayclass=slide

Images are licensed for reuse under creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0