Clapham Common Transport Museum

I've always found these sort of buses quite fascinating.
It's a shame, they were considered "Uneconomical" in those days as they would have been considered "Eco-friendly" in these present times.

 

Go to somewhere like the Czech Republic/Slovakia or even San Francisco and trolleybus use is expanding.
It's actually the Centenary of the start of trolleybus operation here in Ipswich next year - and the 60th anniversary of the closure of the system as well. We do still have one of the 3 original vehicles that started it all in September 1923......

 

Overhead trolley (or more likely pantograph) cables may be coming back soon - but over motorways, to charge electric lorries and coaches on the move, rather than in town centres.

 

Is it April 1st already?

 

Not quite, but I'd love to know who will pay for the required infrastructure when they seem to come up with every excuse known to avoid any rail electrification......
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...ld-slash-uk-road-freight-emissions-says-study

 

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...s-scheme-for-motorway-cables-to-power-lorries

As hair-brained schemes go, this is up there. Do you electrify the inside lane and have all the lorries bunched up meaning cars can't join or leave them motorway, or use the outside lane and have them cross over the rest of the traffic at 56mph? Maybe you could build a new formation, put a couple of steel guides down with overhead wires above, and get them to all run in convoy with just one driver.

 

Must have closed around the same time as the Ipswich Underground system, another great loss that could have been dug up and used elsewhere

http://www.simonknott.co.uk/ipswichunderground.htm

 

No they should put up electrified mesh like the dogem cars at the fair. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said that as some nutter might think it’s a good idea

 

Trying out new ideas is the whole point of doing engineering trials In this example the catenary is on the inside lane. There's no reason why trucks would need to bunch up any more than they do now - if the driver wants to change lanes they just lower the pantograph.
What if Highways Were Electric? Germany Is Testing the Idea. - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

 

It won’t happen, have you seen the clearance between a high trailer and a motorway bridge?

 

There is no need for the OH wires to span any gauge-fouling structure since this system is for charging only.

 

Might be a few broken pantographs littering the motorway though!

 

I’ll imagine the system’ll have been designed to avoid that but, again, the point of a full scale engineering trial is to see how well it works in practice and whether there are any unforeseen blipblats etc. Brunel still has a great reputation as a visionary Engineer despite some of his visions (including atmospheric propulsions) not working so well in practice.

The more I think about it the more practicable this idea seems to be. Since the catenary needs to span neither low bridges nor junctions, I’d hope it’d be designed for the majority of installation and maintenance works to be done during overnight lane closures (inside lane & hard shoulder only).

 

Existing height lorries cause innumerable railway bridge bashes resulting in multi-million pound bills repairing railway bridges and causing varying degrees of disruption, etc.
I wonder what the increase in bridge bashes will be with the addition of pantographs on lorries?

 

Minimal, I’d imagine.