IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Birchington Avenue, MIDDLESBROUGH, TS6 7LP

Looking east towards Teesside Power Station.

This photograph shows a view of Grangetown Library which is located on Birchington Avenue near the Church of St Hilda. The church tower can be seen standing behind the library building and a part of the Eston Hills appears just to the left of it. The picture was taken looking in a south-south-westerly direction towards Eston.

Behind it can be seen continuing construction of the Whale Hill housing estate. A few months later, the route would be extended to the right along Birchington Avenue to Eston and on to the other terminus at Normanby, this being the very last new trolleybus route to be constructed in the UK.

31 March 1968 saw the opening of the very last trolleybus route to be built in Britain. It involved what was then the smallest system in the country, the Teesside Railless Traction Board, to the east of Middlesbrough. The new route linked the existing termini at Grangetown (Fabian Road) and Normanby via what had been the rural village of Eston, now swallowed up by the extension of housing development which was the reason for the route extension. In the distance can be seen chimneys of the Dorman Long steelworks, which was the original raison d'etre for a trolleybus system. Here we see the very first official run over the system, breaking the tape at Fabian Road. It's attracted a small crowd of local residents - with a style of dress very redolent of the era. For a slide show of British Trolleybuses in the late 60s http://www.geograph.org.uk/search.php?i=1773236&displayclass=slide