Memories of boyhood days when trolleybuses served a city

Keep dipping into the archive (Yorkshire Post, June 6). According to my reading, Leeds beat Bradford by four days in having the first trolleybus service running (June, 1911).

Whereas trams continued to service most of Leeds, Bradford City Tramways decided to convert many tram routes to trolleybuses.

In 1923, Clayton, still an urban district, was served by a motor bus company.

Following a Bradford Corporation act of that year, trolleybuses began to operate between the city and this village.

I was an early trolleybus enthusiast. It would be in 1927, when as, two four-year-olds, a friend and I, used to jump up and down excitedly in the road near Clayton park, watching the single-deckers go by.

A shopkeeper warned my mother: “Them two’s bahn to get run ovver!”

In our teenage years, another friend and I knew the type and number of every Bradford “trackless” as they were often called.

In 1971, I rode late in the evening on the last trolleybus to run from Bradford to Clayton before motor buses took over.

I have long been a subscriber to the Bradford Trolleybus Association (BTA).

Bradford trolleybuses can be seen in various transport museums.

Number 844, which you pictured, is still, I believe in the Keighley Bus Museum. Number 758 is being restored with the help of BTA.

Many hoped to see trolleybuses return to Bradford. They cause no atmospheric pollution, and their smooth, rapid acceleration suits the hilly roads out of Bradford centre.

Later vehicles conserved energy, feeding current back into the wiring system as they free-wheeled downhill.

English Electric, at Thornbury, and other British firms, were involved in trolleybus manufacture, but I am afraid that if such vehicles were to run in this country again, they would be made in Germany, like our local electric trains.

We beat Germany in two wars, but Germany, now makers of Rolls Royce cars, has us beaten in engineering and manufacturing.

From: Rev Canon FG Hunter, Flexbury Avenue, Morley.

RECENT letters and articles in the Yorkshire Post have revealed the understandable confusion that has arisen over the incident on May 10, 1926, when, during the miners’ strike, Flying Scotsman was deliberately derailed at Cramlington, Northumberland.

It was the south-bound train of that name that came off the track. The engine pulling it was Merry Hampton, No 2565.

The locomotive Flying Scotsman No 4472 was a London-based engine for most of its working life.