The town that wanted Bristol trolleybuses

摘要

Rotherham was the fourth place in the UK to introduce a public trolleybus service, bn 3 October 1912, following Leeds and Bradford in June 1911 and the short-lived Dundee line in September 1912. Rotherham's also was the first to operate beyond municipal boundaries, and while it had objected initially to the trolleybuses of the Mexborough & Swinton company operating into the town centre, on 10 March 1929 it inaugurated the first joint working of trolleybus routes in this country. This part of South Yorkshire was beset by many low bridges and from 1912-50 all new trolleybuses purchased were single-deckers. The first were by Railless Electric Traction with 26-seat bodies by Milnes Voss, while in 1922 Straker-Clough became the favoured chassis-supplier, with bodies from Charles H. Roe, built originally as forward-entrance 32-seaters and modified later to centre-door, and this layout became the Rotherham standard for the next 30 years.