History of the trolleybus

The electric vehicle from 1882 is considered to be the first forerunner trolleybus

World Exhibition 1900: The first trolleybuses in passenger service, here exchanging pantographs

The Gleislose Bahn Eberswalde was the first trolleybus in Germany

This article covers the history of the trolleybus . Most trolleybuses replaced tram operators or supplement them to this day. On the other hand, they are seldom, or were, to be found in cities where trams never run.

Starting position and history

The advancing industrialization made the development of alternative and more efficient means of transport necessary in the second half of the 19th century . Steam traction - that is, steam locomotives , steam trams , steam buses or steam wagons - as well as horses - that is, horse-drawn trams , horse-drawn buses , horse-drawn carriages or horse-drawn carts - were no longer up to date. New means of transport were urgently needed for routes on which a railroad or tram was not profitable due to the low transport volume and comparatively high investment costs, but where more efficient means of transport were still required. The progressive growth of the cities played an equally decisive role.

At the turn of the century and at the beginning of the 20th century, the electric drive was perceived as particularly attractive despite the associated problems, as the performance of the internal combustion engines of the time in buses was comparatively low. Typically, therefore, mostly steep inclines were electrified later, which posed enormous problems for ordinary buses.

Initial considerations by the Siemens brothers

Werner Siemens started thinking about electrically powered road vehicles early on . As early as 1847, the year Siemens & Halske was founded , he mentioned the wish in a letter:

"When I have time and money, I want to build myself an electromagnetic cab that certainly won't leave me in the dirt ..."

- Werner Siemens, 1847

During the development of the new system, Werner Siemens was in close contact with his brother Carl Wilhelm Siemens , who had emigrated to England , and he was also interested in this idea. In 1880 Carl Wilhelm Siemens wrote:

"Another arrangement by which an ordinary omnibus might be run upon the street would have a suspender thrown at intervals from one side of the street to the other, and two wires hanging from these suspenders; allowing contact-rollers to run on these two wires, the current could be conveyed to the tram-car, and back again to the dynamo machine at the station, without the necessity of running upon rails at all. "

- Carl Wilhelm Siemens, 1880

• 

  Werner Siemens

• 

  Carl Wilhelm Siemens

The beginnings

Trial farm in Halensee near Berlin (1882)

→ Main article : Electromote

The Elektromote operated northeast of Halensee station in 1882

Just a year after the world's first electric tram was presented, Werner Siemens and Siemens & Halske - also near Berlin - presented an electrically operated wagonette . The system was called Elektromote and is considered to be the world's first trolleybus forerunner. The 540 meter long Elektromote test track in Halensee near Berlin was opened on April 29, 1882 and closed again on June 20, 1882. The electric vehicle is older than the world's first fuel-powered bus , which was only built by Carl Benz in 1895 .

In the case of the electric vehicle , the current from the two-pole overhead contact line was taken from an eight-wheeled contact car, which, like a trolley, ran on the catenary wires and was pulled behind the vehicle by a towing cable . The electric motor had two electric motors with 2.2 kilowatts each, which acted on the rear wheels via a chain transmission. The car was operated with 550 volts direct current and had wooden wheels with steel tires. The system proved to be suitable in principle, but was not further developed due to the generally poor road conditions at the time, which prevented the pantograph from running smoothly.

It was only with the electric tram-omnibus of 1898 that Siemens & Halske presented a vehicle for electrical operation away from any rail infrastructure, but this was a hybrid between tram and battery bus that managed without a two-pole overhead line.

Early trial operations in the United States

Harvey D. Dibble (1889)

In 1889, Harvey D. Dibble finally patented a four-wheeled contact cart based on the electric motor, for which there was a trial operation in Hill City, South Dakota . The dibble system already knew separate contact lines for each direction of travel:

• 

  Dibble system with one catenary for each direction of travel, another car at the rear

• 

  Dibble patent dated July 2, 1889, side view of the car

• 

  Dibble patent from July 2, 1889, detailed view of the pantograph

• 

  Dibble patent dated July 2, 1889, detailed view of the lateral deviation

Willis G. Caffrey (1897)

Willis G. Caffrey set up another trial operation in 1897 in Reno , Nevada . In his two-seater test vehicle, known as Caffrey Electric , he experimented with a weight attached far below the contact cart, this served to increase stability and should ensure that the pantograph ran as smoothly as possible. At Caffrey there was a 25 foot catenary tower every 125 feet , the wires themselves stretched 17 feet high and six inches apart. The voltage was 500 volts, with a payload of 500 pounds the vehicle reached a speed of 15 miles an hour.

• 

  The 1897 Caffrey Electric

• 

  Caffrey patent dated February 9, 1897, overall consideration

• 

  Caffrey patent dated February 9, 1897, detailed view of the pantograph

The Lombard-Gérin system (1899)

The driven contact carriage with the three-phase motor

Catenary suspension in the Lombard-Gérin system

The French engineer Louis Lombard-Gérin introduced the Lombard-Gérin system in 1899 . An electrically powered pantograph trolley drove synchronously on the overhead contact line in front of the trolley, relieving the ten-meter-long transmission cable - unlike the previously known trailing cables - from the mechanical pull. The contact car itself weighed 18 kilograms and was operated with three-phase current. It did not get its drive energy directly from the contact line, but from the drive motors of the car by means of electromagnetic induction . This required six or seven lines in the connecting cable. The three-phase current required for the contact car was generated from the alternating current circuit of one of the series motors and was therefore dependent on the driving speed. In addition, the trolley had its own brake, which was operated via a contact on the drive switch, so that synchronous operation was also possible on inclines or slopes. In the Lombard-Gérin system, the distance between the two catenary wires was 30 centimeters; the overhead contact line was suspended from seven-meter-high masts. The two wires made of hard-drawn copper were each 8.25 millimeters in diameter.

The system was first used at the beginning of 1900 on a 900-meter-long test route in the 15th arrondissement of Paris on the Quai d'Issy-les-Moulineaux along the Seine . From August 2, 1900 to November 12, 1900, Lombard-Gérin finally presented his system to a broader public on the occasion of the Paris World Exhibition in the Paris suburb of Saint-Mandé . The pilot route of the Compagnie de Traction par Trolley Automoteur led through the Bois de Vincennes park area , connected the Porte de Vincennes metro station with Lac Daumesnil and was 2.5 kilometers long. This system was the world's first trolleybus in regular service with passengers. The inventor was awarded a gold medal by the jury of the world exhibition for his novelty.

The Compagnie de Traction par Trolley Automoteur intended to expand into Switzerland. Therefore, on December 17, 1900, she conducted demonstration drives with an electric vehicle near Chillon in the Swiss canton of Vaud . For this purpose, a 200 meter long stretch between Villeneuve and Chillon was provided with an overhead line. A two-seater electric vehicle was used.

Soon afterwards, a Lombard-Gérin facility was also opened in Germany on March 22, 1901, the Gleislose Bahn Eberswalde . However, operations had to be stopped after three months, because the roads were too bad and the wheels - they initially had hard rubber tires and were later converted to iron tires - therefore worn out too quickly.

Other operations based on the Lombard-Gérin system existed in Fontainebleau (eight kilometers long overland line to Samois-sur-Seine , 1901 to 1913), in Copenhagen (1902), in Montauban (1903 to 1904), in Marseille (overland line between the district of La Rose and the suburb of Allauch, 1903 to 1905), between Gallarate and Samarate (1904 to 1906) and in Saint-Malo (1906 to 1907).

Furthermore, from 1903 the Teltow , an electrically operated tugboat on the Machnower See , was operated at times with a contact car based on the Lombard-Gérin system.

The Schiemann system (1901)

The Bielatalbahn , opened in 1901, was Schiemann's first trolleybus route. The bars of different lengths, which are arranged one behind the other and which allow turning at any point, are clearly visible

1902: the bidirectional car on the Teltower Kreisbahnen

→ Main article : Society for trackless railways Max Schiemann & Co.

In Germany, the Saxon engineer Max Schiemann (1866–1933) and his company for trackless railways Max Schiemann & Co. played a pioneering role in the further development of the trolleybus. Schiemann succeeded in introducing the grinding shoe system, which is relatively safe when it comes to drawing electricity and which is still in use today, in trolleybuses. For this he used an invention by the British Alfred Dickinson, who as early as 1893 presented a pantograph with contact rollers and a lateral deviation of up to 3.5 meters for trams.

Likewise, as early as 1893, the Stansstad – Stans tram in Switzerland used pantographs with sliding shoes . Schiemann combined the two systems, that is, he constructed a pantograph with lateral deviation and a grinding shoe. The maximum deviation of the wagons from the ideal line caused by the overhead line was thus significantly less than with the systems with contact wagons, but given the narrow streets customary at the time, this had hardly any effect.

In contrast to the current principle, the two pantograph poles at Schiemann were arranged one behind the other instead of next to one another, and they were of different lengths. This made it possible for the vehicles to turn around at any point without outside help or without setting up turning systems. With Schiemann, the two wires were 50 centimeters apart.

The first trolleybus route based on the Schiemann system was the initially 2.5 kilometers long Bielatalbahn in Saxon Switzerland . It was opened on July 10, 1901 and, as was customary at the time, was called the trackless railway . From 1906 to 1917, the Ahrweiler electric trackless railway connected the core city of Ahrweiler with the Walporzheim district and the Neuenahr districts of Hemmessen and Wadenheim. Schiemann built a total of eight trackless railways with passenger traffic, three of them were also operated in freight traffic.

Another Schiemann system was planned in Switzerland between 1900 and 1902. It should follow the north shore of Lake Lucerne and lead from Weggis via Vitznau and Gersau to the Brunnen train station on the Gotthard Railway . Although the Swiss Automobile Society from Aarau submitted a license application, the facility failed due to popular resistance.

Schiemann also experimented in 1902 with a bidirectional vehicle that was constructed like a classic tram. The car had a driver's cab with a drive switch and removable steering wheel at both ends, and it was steered using two turntables . This was a demonstration car for the Italian Società Anonima Elettricità Alta Italia , it was built with a view to the Turin trade fair (May 10 to November 10, 1902). It was previously tested at the Teltower Kreisbahnen .

The Stoll system (1901)

The Stoll system

1903: The Haide Railway was Stoll's first trolleybus system

The patent specification of Carl Stoll

The Dresden entrepreneur (Dresdner Wagenbauanstalt Carl Stoll) and designer Carl Stoll (1846–1907) further developed the principle invented by the American Willis G. Caffrey with the weight attached under the contact cart. He perfected this idea and applied for a patent for it on April 9, 1901.

At Stoll, the contact cart was not driven, but - as was the case with the electric motor vehicle or the American test systems - dragged along by means of the electrical cable. The cart ran on two contact wires 30 centimeters apart. In order to ensure a smooth run, a 60 centimeter long pole was attached to the center of gravity, at the lower end of which there was a steel ball.

The vehicles had a pole at the left corner of the driver's cab, through which the cables were led from the pantograph to the car. If two vehicles met on the route, the leads of the contact pairs were exchanged during a short stop. As a result, wagon encounters could take place everywhere, even though there was only one overhead line for both directions of travel. Furthermore, with the Stoll system, the vehicles could deviate between four and six meters from the ideal line of the overhead line, thus significantly further than with the competing Schiemann system. This enabled them to avoid normal wide roads like ordinary carts.

With regard to the electrical equipment of his vehicles, Stoll cooperated with the Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft (AEG); the company was thus in direct competition with the Siemens company (which in turn worked together with his former employee Schiemann). A special feature of the Stoll vehicles was the structure based on the principle of a semi -trailer truck , they all had a two-axle drive unit on which a single-axle trailer was placed. Ultimately, however, the Stoll concept could not prove itself, in particular the articulated lorry principle proved to be impractical. Ultimately, only four lines were operated according to the Stoll system - all four had to stop operating after a short time:

Designer Carl Stoll (1846–1907)

business	country	length	dare	opening	attitude
Dresden Haide Railway	Germany	5.2 km	6th	1903	1904
Trackless railway Poprád – Ótátrafüred	Hungary (now Slovakia )	13.8 km	3	1904	1906
Trackless railway Sibiu	Hungary (now Romania )	2.3 km	4th	1904	1904
Trackless railway from Niederschöneweide to Johannisthal	Germany	1.5 km	2	1904	1905

On December 29, 1903, AEG, Stoll's main partner, terminated its contract with the Dresden entrepreneur. The Niederschöneweide – Johannisthal line, which opened almost a year later, was then operated independently by AEG. After the Russian government dropped its plans to build such a railway in St. Petersburg as a result of the lost war against Japan , the company ran into financial difficulties. The entrepreneur, ruined by the failure, committed suicide in 1907. His son Hans-Ludwig Stoll took over his father's business and moved it from Dresden to Vienna in the same year, where he worked as a builder of trolleybus systems until 1914.

The Cantono-Frigerio system (1903)

→ Main article : Cantono-Frigerio system

A Cantono Frigerio car at the 1906 Milan World's Fair

In the Cantono-Frigerio system, the contact trolley was pressed against the contact line from below

The Cantono-Frigerio system introduced in 1903 dominated the first trolleybus systems in Italy . The routes in question were carried out by the Roman company Eugenio Cantono SA (from 1904 Cantono Avantreni SA or from 1906 Fabbrica Rotabili Avantreni Motori SA) of the inventor Eugenio Cantono in cooperation with the Milanese Società in Accomandita Ing.Carlo Frigerio & C. (from 1905 Società per la Trazione Elettrica ) by the engineer Carlo Frigerio. It was a mixture of the previously known systems. A contact cart was still used, but on the one hand it was already connected to the vehicle by a fixed rod and on the other hand it was pressed against the catenary from below.

The first connection according to the Cantono-Frigerio system was the overland line from Pescara to the suburb of Castellammare Adriatico (incorporated in 1927). Although it was closed again in 1904, more than ten more routes with this type of pantograph followed up to the First World War - but only very few of them survived the war.

Lyon - Charbonnières , the only Nithard plant

The Nithard system (1905)

Technically largely identical to the Schiemann system, the Nithard system was named after its inventor Charles Nithard (1868–1946) from Riedisheim in Alsace . Nithard also used two grinding shoes that were pressed against the catenary, but the poles were already arranged next to each other - as is customary to this day. However, only one line was operated according to his principle, this was the four kilometer long overland line from Tassin-la-Demi-Lune to Charbonnières-les-Bains , located near Lyon . The route of the Société de transport et d'éclairage électrique de Charbonnières-les-Bains opened in early September 1905. After a person died in contact with the catenary, the connection had to be closed again on September 10, 1907.

The Mercédès-Électrique-Stoll system (1907)

French advertisement for the Mercédès-Électrique-Stoll system

The Gmünd electric trolley line, opened in 1907, was the first to use the Mercédès-Électrique-Stoll system

Open summer carriages were also used on the trackless railway from Preßburg to Eisenbrünnl

Pantograph replacement on the Steglitz trackless bus

After Carl Stoll's death, his son Hans-Ludwig Stoll brought his father's idea to series maturity together with the Oesterreichische Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft (Austro-Daimler) from Wiener Neustadt and the K. uk Hofwagenfabrik Jacob Lohner & Co. from Vienna. Daimler was responsible for the engines and electrical equipment, Lohner manufactured the car bodies.

The further developed patent was named after the company involved Austro-Daimler System Elektro-Daimler-Stoll . However, it was marketed under the "more cosmopolitan" French name System Mercédès-Électrique-Stoll , and more rarely the System Mercédès-Élektrique-Stoll . In Great Britain Stoll worked with the company Cedes Electric Traction Ltd from Stamford Hill ( Greater London ); there the new principle was offered accordingly as the Cedes-Stoll system. It was first used on July 16, 1907 in the Lower Austrian city ​​of Gmünd ; the local electrical overhead line automobile line Gmünd was also the first trolleybus system in Austria and the Czech Republic. In addition, the system was presented to a wider public at the Exposition Internationale des Applications de l'Electricité in Marseille in 1908 , where an 800-meter-long test track with passenger transport existed from April to November.

In contrast to Stoll's original system, the articulated lorry principle was dispensed with and wheel hub motors were used instead . In the contemporary lexicon of all technology by Otto Lueger , the Mercédès-Électrique-Stoll system is described as follows:

“The stability of the pantograph frame is increased by the fact that the resilient roller is suspended from it like a pendulum, which relieves the connection points of the supply cable that is pulled together like a loop on the pantograph. This cable is connected to a second cable, 12 m long, which is wound around a drum attached to the trolley, using an easily removable socket .

When the vehicle dodges, the drum, which is tensioned by a spring, automatically winds up the expired piece of cable; this makes it possible to drive the entire width of the street independently of the overhead line and to turn around everywhere. The cable connection with socket allows two cars driving in opposite directions to easily avoid each other, the car drivers exchange the sockets and thus the pantographs and continue driving again.

The power goes from the cable drum to the two motors, each with 20 HP, built into the rear wheels. via a controller with six speeds, the first three of which are connected in series and the last three are connected in parallel. By installing the electric motors in the rear wheels, any gear ratio and chain transmission is avoided and thus complete silence is guaranteed. The cars have single solid rubber tires at the front and double tires at the rear. They have two independent foot strap brakes that act on the rear wheels and also an electric short-circuit brake with three braking levels that enable an almost immediate stop. "

With regard to the new technology, Ludwig Stoll benefited from the inventions of the engineer Ferdinand Porsche , who had been development and production manager at Austro-Daimler since 1906. These included, on the one hand, the wheel hub motor, which Porsche had patented in 1896, and, on the other hand, the Lohner-Porsche electric car presented in 1900 , which was technically related to the trackless railways produced by Stoll from 1907 onwards.

Further technical innovations were the use of solid rubber tires instead of iron-tyred wooden spoke wheels. In addition, for the first time in regular passenger service, two of the Mercédès-Électrique-Stoll systems had a pair of catenaries available for each direction of travel, referred to by Stoll as a four-wire system. The Mercédès-Électrique-Stoll type was comparatively widespread, with a total of 18 systems based on this system. However, a route planned in Munich in 1912 , it was supposed to lead from Neuhausen to Sendling , could no longer be realized:

business	country	length	dare	opening	attitude
Electric overhead line automobile line Gmünd	Austria (now partially Czech Republic )	2.88 km	2	1907	1916
Marseille	France	0.8 km	2	1908	1908
Electric catenary automobile company in the municipality of Weidling	Austria	3.7 km	5	1908	1919
Trackless railway Pötzleinsdorf – Salmannsdorf	Austria	2.2 km	4th	1908	1938
Electric overhead line Liesing – Kalksburg	Austria	3.8 km	4th	1909	1920
Trackless railway Preßburg – Eisenbrünnl (also freight traffic)	Hungary (now Slovakia )	5.8 km	6th	1909	1915
Trackless railway Budweis	Bohemia (now the Czech Republic)	1.6 km	2	1909	1914
Trackless train Judenburg	Austria	1.9 km	1	1910	1914
Trackless railway Heilbronn – Böckingen	Germany	5.5 km	4th	1911	1916
Trackless railway Freiburg – Farvagny (also freight transport)	Switzerland	12.5 km	3	1912	1932
Steglitz track globe	Germany	1.8 km	3	1912	1914
Paris– Saint-Mandé	France	2.2 km	2	1912	1914
West Ham	Great Britain	-	1	1912	1912
Keighley	Great Britain	-	8th	1913	1926/1932
Aberdare	Great Britain	-	8th	1914	1925
Hove	Great Britain	-	1	1914	1914
Germiston	South Africa	-	10	1914	1918
Constantine	France (now Algeria )	5 km	6th	1921	1925/1963

A Stoll cart on a contemporary poster stamp for Metzeler -Vollgummireifen

1. ↑ Presentation section
2. ↑ with four-wire system
3. ↑ with four-wire system
4. ↑ plus a catenary truck
5. ↑ plus a trailer
6. ↑ plus a catenary truck
7. ↑ only trial operation
8. ↑ Keighley turned away from the Stoll system in 1926, but the trolleybus operation continued until 1932
9. ↑ only trial operation
10. ↑ plus a trailer
11. ↑ Constantine turned away from the Stoll system in 1925, but the trolleybus operation continued until 1963

The Lloyd-Koehler System (1910)

Another German development was the Lloyd-Köhler system, first applied in 1910 . The eponymous company Gleislose Lloydbahnen Köhlers Bahnpatente GmbH from Bremen , a joint venture between the inventor Georg Willy Köhler and the later Hansa-Lloyd -Werke, was in charge of the development. In this system, the two wires were arranged one above the other, with the minus wire running vertically over the plus wire. This arrangement was not accidental, it was intended to prevent a falling power line from triggering a short circuit . The current was also drawn using a contact cart, but this only had two roles. They ran on top of the minus wire, while two contact shoes were pressed against the plus wire from below. In addition, a cable loop with a spring under the slide ensured that the overhead line was protected when starting up.

Vertical line arrangement in the Lloyd-Koehler system

The cable routing and the car body were largely identical to the Mercédès-Électrique-Stoll system. Köhler also used solid rubber tires and wheel hub motors. And with the Lloyd-Köhler system, vehicles meeting each other had to stop briefly and switch the pantographs. However, the system did not prove itself either and was only used in five companies.In 1915, the Köhler company finally filed for bankruptcy :

business	country	length	dare	opening	attitude
Bremen-Arster Railway	Germany	03.2 km	2 motor vehicles	1910	1916
Park lane	Germany	03.1 km	4 motor vehicles	1910	1911
Ludwigsburg catenary railways	Germany	15.1 km	6 motor vehicles, 3 trailers	1910	1926
Trackless Lloyd-Bahn Brockau	Germany (now Poland )	04.3 km	4 motor vehicles, 2 trailers	1912	1914
Stockport	Great Britain	02.8 km	3 motor vehicles	1913	1919

First regular operation in the United States (1910)

Intersection in Laurel Canyon , the right car with the bars removed

In the United States, the first regular passenger trolleybus line opened on September 11, 1910, called The Trackless Trolley . The 2.7 kilometer long route on the outskirts of Los Angeles connected the tram terminus on Sunset Boulevard with the popular excursion destination and bungalow district of Laurel Canyon . The two contact wires were significantly further apart than in the previously known systems. The two pantographs were not placed in the middle, but on the edge of the car body . A special feature of this system were the additional ropes including counterweights , which instead of the usual tension springs provided the necessary contact pressure for the contact rods. The operating company was the Laurel Canyon Utilities Company , founded in 1909, and the local tram company Pacific Electric Railway (PE) provided power with 600 volts direct current . There were two vehicles, each offering space for ten passengers. However, this operation was terminated as early as 1915 and replaced by Stanley Steamer steam cars .

Break through the First World War

Stagnation in continental Europe

Resentment towards the new means of transport, depicted in caricatures on a contemporary postcard

Although the states of Germany, France, Italy and Austria led the way in the initial development of the trolleybus, especially Germany with the advanced Schiemann system, the First World War was a serious setback for the trolleybus pioneers on mainland Europe . The war caused further development to stagnate, not least because the copper required for the construction of overhead lines was diverted to the armaments industry . This not only prevented new plants, but also took over the contact wires of existing companies as a raw material essential to the war effort by the military . Furthermore, most of the trolleybus companies had a shortage of staff because many employees were called up for military service.

But technical problems also played a role; the road surfaces were often too bad for the comparatively heavy trolleybuses. This was especially true for the trailer trains. The operating companies were often held responsible for the resulting road damage. Drive concepts and power collection systems were also not yet fully developed, and the interaction of both factors often caused problems. For example, the wheel hub motors used in some systems were not as well sealed as today's fully encapsulated motors. This led to problems on the then still numerous unsurfaced natural roads, they caused a corresponding dust load on the drives. But the population was also often skeptical about the new means of transport at first. Some even considered them eerie because of their almost noiseless operation, comparable to the reservations about the first steam locomotives in the 19th century. The tickets , which are often expensive due to the high operating costs , in turn resulted in a lack of passenger popularity in many cases and thus in high deficits.

Of the total of 15 systems that were built in the German Reich between 1901 and 1912 , only the Ludwigsburg overhead line railways survived the end of the First World War. It was similar in France (where only the company in Lille survived the war), in Italy (where only one company survived the year 1922) and in Austria-Hungary (where only the trackless railway from Pötzleinsdorf – Salmannsdorf survived the year 1920).

Worldwide breakthrough in the British Empire

The first British trolleybus ran in London in 1909

The first South American trolleybus ran in Mendoza in Argentina from October 1913 , here on a test drive in Leeds in August 1913

As early as 1908, the British Railless Electric Traction Company acquired a license for the Schiemann system and developed it further. On September 25, 1909, it built a test facility in the capital, London , and after extensive tests, two more facilities followed in Bradford and Leeds in 1911 . Within just a few years, the trolleybus then spread to all other continents in addition to Europe and North America . He quickly gained a foothold in the British Empire in particular :

continent	Country	city	Opening date
Asia	Japan	Tokyo	April 1912, only experimental operation
South America	Argentina	Mendoza	October 1913, experimental operation only
Africa	South Africa	Boksburg	March 1914
Oceania	New Zealand	Wellington	September 1924

As a result of the First World War, the system was further developed mainly in Great Britain and the United States. For example, between 1887 and 1924 there were around twenty test facilities in the USA alone. The previously leading nations Germany, France, Italy and Austria, however, were largely decoupled from further developments due to the war.

American designers set a milestone after the war. They managed to develop pantographs for speeds of 60 km / h by 1923. The introduction of pneumatic tires in bus construction in the 1920s also had a positive effect on the further development of the trolleybus . They not only ensured more passenger comfort, but also reduced the risk of rod derailment due to strong vibrations . Furthermore, the continuous improvement of the road conditions ensured the increasing popularity of the trolleybus. In particular, the move away from paved roads, macadam roads and natural roads in favor of paved roads played a decisive role here.

The years of greatest diffusion

Worldwide development

Installation of a catenary mast with a truck crane based on a ZIS-6 truck in Odessa, 1941

During the interwar period , the trolleybus gained wide acceptance around the world, particularly in Great Britain, the United States and the USSR. In those years, trolleybuses replaced trams around the world, mainly because the rails did not have to be replaced, line extensions were much cheaper, they went faster and more quietly and were therefore often more attractive to passengers .

In 1934, 1089 trolleybuses were already in use in 30 companies with a total network length of 589 kilometers in Great Britain; at the end of the 1930s there were already 2600 vehicles. In the post-war period, up to 1764 cars ran in the capital London alone, making it the largest trolleybus fleet in the world.

A total of 38 trolleybus systems have existed in Great Britain over the years, the vast majority of them in England . In Wales (five networks), Scotland (two networks) and Northern Ireland (one network in the capital, Belfast ) the trolleybus was less common, in neighboring Ireland there was never a trolleybus service.

In the United States by 1934 there were 458 trolleybuses in 24 companies with a total network length of 335 kilometers. In 1940, 2,800 cars were already running in 60 networks. This development reached its absolute peak in 1950, when more than 6,500 trolleybuses were in use simultaneously in the USA.

From 1933 the trolleybus began to establish itself in the Soviet Union , when the first operation was opened in the capital Moscow . In the course of the industrialization of the Soviet Union , the Soviet trolleybus network grew to become the most extensive in the world. Trolleybus systems were systematically opened in the capitals of all 14 other Union republics - each time before the respective provincial towns were equipped with trolleybus operations: in 1935 in Kiev , 1937 in Tbilisi , 1941 in Baku , 1944 in Alma-Ata , 1947 in Riga and Tashkent , 1949 in Chișinău and Yerevan , 1951 in Bishkek , 1952 in Minsk , 1955 in Dushanbe , 1956 in Vilnius , 1964 in Ashgabat and 1965 in Tallinn . Since the trolleybus networks were not dismantled in Eastern Europe from the 1960s, the trolleybus is now one of the typical attributes of the Eastern European streetscape.

• 

  1934 in Moscow:
  the LK-1 was the first type of Soviet trolleybus

• 

  A typical American Brill car from 1954, here in Edmonton

• 

  Netherlands: Arnhem trolleybus from 1949

• 

  Australia: Trolleybus in Brisbane , 1951

• 

  1972: Britain's last trolleybus in Bradford

In the western world, however, the decline of the trolleybus as a means of transport began in the 1960s due to the focus on individual transport. For example, in the former trolleybus stronghold of Great Britain, the last operation was closed in 1972; it was located in Bradford . The last trolleybus operated in London as early as 1962. In the United States, the shutdown of the Chicago network in 1973 put an end to a long series of operational shutdowns; only five of the once 60 networks survived to this day.

In the 1970s, the price development in the energy sector, the oil crises of 1973 and 1979/80 as well as increasing environmental awareness in various countries led to a revival of the discussion about the trolleybus. Advances in drive technology also contributed to the fact that the trolleybus was again accepted as an alternative to other means of transport. Nevertheless, comparatively few new businesses have been opened in the western world since then. However, the discussion in the 1970s meant that many networks that were at risk of recruitment at the time have survived to this day.

Furthermore, over the years some developing countries have equipped their capitals with trolleybus operations, particularly in Asia and Latin America . These were often prestige projects, some of which were quite short-lived, often with financial and technical support from abroad. This category includes, for example, the networks in Manila (1924 to 1955), Georgetown (1924 to 1961), Singapore (1926 to 1962), Lima (1928 to 1931), Rangoon (1936 to 1942), Caracas (1937 to 1945), Havana (1949 to 1954), Port of Spain (1951 to 1956), Cairo (1950 to 1981), Montevideo (1951 to 1992), Colombo (1953 to 1964) and Tunis (1954 to 1970). In later years also the trolleybus Kathmandu (1975 to 2008), the trolleybus Kabul (1979 to 1992) and operation in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi (1986 to 1993).

Japan

1952: Trolleybus in Tokyo

The first trolleybus route in Japan existed between 1928 and 1932 with the Shin-Hanayashiki Onsen Tochi between Takarazuka and Kawanishi . The Settsu Denki Jidōsha planned such a system for the Kobe area as early as 1923.

Discontinued trolleybus routes were the (shiei) Toei Trolleybus (1952–1968 by the Tokyo Prefecture Transportation Office ), Kawasaki-shiei Trolleybus (1951–1964 in Kawasaki ), Yokohama-shiei Trolleybus (1959–1972 in Yokohama ) operated by the respective city traffic authorities , Nagoya-shiei trolleybus (1943–1951 in Nagoya ), Kyōto-shiei trolleybus (1932–1969 in Kyōto ) and the Ōsaka-shiei trolleybus (1953–1970 in Osaka ). Such a system was also planned for Nagaoka in the post-war period with the Nagaoka-shiei Mukijō Densha.

Renaissance and renewed decline in Germany and Austria

German Empire

At the beginning of the 1930s, the trend towards the modern trolleybus also changed in the German Reich . In terms of technology, the latest developments from Great Britain and the USA were used. After there had been no trolleybus traffic in the German Reich for four years, Germany's first modern trolleybus system was opened on August 26, 1930 with the Mettmann – Gruiten trolleybus . This route was initially more a test route than a line for passenger transport; the test drives had priority over regular operations. Further experimental farms existed in 1930/31 on the grounds of the BBC in Mannheim-Käfertal and from January 25, 1931 in Nuremberg . However, there was no scheduled passenger service on the latter two routes.

A Berlin trolleybus of the type Büssing / CuU / AEG from 1933 on a postage stamp from 1972

The Idar-Oberstein trolleybus went into operation in 1932 as the second modern system with regular operation. In 1933 and 1935, two trolleybus lines were also opened in the capital Berlin . However, they were always operationally separate from each other, the first was in the Spandau district , the second in the Steglitz district . Further new plants followed in 1936 in Oldenburg and Insterburg in East Prussia , in Hanover in 1937 and in Leipzig and Zwickau in 1938 . Two days before the outbreak of the Second World War , on September 1, 1939, trolleybus traffic was finally opened in Allenstein in East Prussia to supplement the tram. At the beginning of the war, nine German cities already had a trolleybus.

The war ultimately accelerated the plans to convert tram operators to trolleybus traffic, among other things because the steel of the rails that became free could be used for the armaments industry. A changeover to omnibus operation was also ruled out because, due to the armament of the Wehrmacht , fuel had to be saved urgently in bus operations as early as 1936 . The basis for this was a decree of the Reich Ministry for Armaments and War Production .

Last but not least, the trolleybuses were faster than the trams of the time - many companies still had older types of railcars, which were also typically heavily worn after a few years due to the war - above all, they accelerated better. Thus, the turnaround times could be shortened, it was possible to save both vehicles and personnel with the same transport performance. This also somewhat compensated for the loss caused by employees drafted to the front. In addition, war damage on trolleybus routes could be removed more quickly and the routes reactivated more quickly because no rails had to be repaired.

In this way - despite the unfavorable circumstances - in what is now the Federal Republic of Germany, 18 new trolleybus operations were created in the six years of the war alone. Four more plants were opened in the areas that have not belonged to Germany since 1945: 1943 in Königsberg (as a supplement to the tram), Landsberg an der Warthe (here also goods traffic with electric overhead line tractors from Faun / Siemens-Schuckert pulled the trailers ) and Liegnitz as well as in 1944 in Waldenburg , both in Silesia . The latter, however, did not have a long life, with the exception of the Liegnitz operation, all three had to cease operations in January 1945 due to the war. Numerous other trolleybus projects at that time had to be postponed completely in view of the circumstances, so that the trams were only replaced by trolleybuses in a few cities. An example is the replacement of the city tram in Eßlingen with the trolleybus Esslingen am Neckar .

The operation in Wilhelmshaven was a specialty . In addition to the urban trolleybus network opened in 1943, the private entrepreneur Theodor Pekol operated an overland line to Jever from 1944 onwards . In the urban area, the communal and private trolleybuses shared the common contact line systems.

Federal Republic of Germany and Saarland until 1990

Boom

At zero hour there were nominally 22 trolleybus systems in the three western occupation zones - including West Berlin and Saarland - although not all of them were functional due to the war. The further expansion continued unabated, on December 16, 1946 the first West German trolleybus operation of the post-war period opened in Mainz . When the Federal Republic of Germany was founded on May 23, 1949, there were already 34 plants, one of them in Saarland .

The Minden trolleybus opened on December 19, 1953 as the last operation of this era . In contrast, the line from Mettmann to Gruiten, the opening of which in 1930 ushered in the trolleybus renaissance in Germany, no longer experienced this high point. It was shut down again as early as 1952 - the first among modern trolleybus operations in West Germany.

With 55 networks operated at the same time - three of them in Saarland , which was still partially sovereign at the time - the renaissance of the trolleybus in West Germany finally reached its peak in the years 1954 to 1957. If you consider the Moers trolleybus , i.e. the joint network of the Moerser Verkehrsbetriebe (KMV) district and the Duisburger Verkehrsgesellschaft (DVG) as separate operations - Duisburg was still connected to the KMV network on December 18, 1954 - the number increases to 56 .

The trolleybus experienced a remarkable turning point in West Germany as a result of the abolition of the import duty for mineral oil in 1954 . After that - apart from the duo bus / track bus test operation in Essen, which was not set up until 1983 - no new facilities were opened. Regardless of this, the existing networks were expanded even after 1954, in particular to develop the new housing developments on the outskirts of the city at that time.

The largest trolleybus network in the Federal Republic of Germany, the Moers trolleybus, spanned the streets of the cities of Duisburg , Homberg am Niederrhein , Moers , Kamp-Lintfort , Rheinberg , Rheinhausen and Neukirchen-Vluyn , until 1968 the last trolleybus drove from Moers to Rheinhausen-Friemersheim . The total network size was 54.635 kilometers, after which a further 1.35 kilometers belonged to Duisburg.

With a distance of 29.51 kilometers, the Duisburg-Ruhrort-Rheinberg route was the longest trolleybus route in Germany. It was in full operation from December 18, 1954 to May 22, 1966. Vehicles from the then KMV and DVG operated on the route. The second largest network was the Siegen trolleybus , which at times extended to 46.2 kilometers. The third largest network at the time, with a length of 38.7 kilometers, was the Solingen trolleybus .

Otherwise, the West German trolleybus cities consisted of predominantly small and medium-sized cities, which replaced their tram operations. In the major West German cities, however, the trolleybus never prevailed against the tram, for example in Aachen , Augsburg , Bremen , Bremerhaven , Essen , Flensburg , Frankfurt am Main , Hanover , Harburg , Kassel , Cologne , Krefeld , Munich , Regensburg and Wiesbaden never more than one route.

Decline

The majority of the companies in the Federal Republic could only hold out for a short time, however, almost all of them disappeared again in the 1960s. An example of this is the development of the nationwide operating route length in those years:

• 1961: 698 kilometers
• 1962: 674 kilometers
• 1963: 543 kilometers
• 1964: 488 kilometers

At the beginning of the 1970s, only eleven West German cities operated trolleybuses. The reasons for this decline were varied, but coincided with one another in time:

• The massive road expansion of the time played a major role. The associated relocation of the catenary - including the constantly changing temporary construction work - had to be largely borne by the transport companies themselves. The trolleybus could therefore not be reconciled with the then modern concept of the so-called car - friendly city .
• The systematic electrification of railway lines by the Deutsche Bundesbahn also developed into an obstacle for trolleybus traffic. Not everywhere were they ready to build overpasses or underpasses or to equip the trolleybuses with auxiliary engines as an alternative.
• Another problem arose from the ban on transporting people in trailers from July 1, 1960. In order to achieve the same transport capacity, new articulated trolleybuses would have had to be procured in many places . Many companies therefore used this restriction to switch to diesel buses straight away.
• In addition, from 1962 onwards, no more series vehicles were offered in Germany. At that time, the Henschel company was the last complete supplier to stop producing trolleybuses. This later led, among other things, to self-build such as the Solingen trolleybus type .
• Furthermore, diesel buses were exempt from mineral oil tax in the 1960s . As a result, regular services could be served more cheaply with them than with trolleybuses.

Often only one generation of vehicles was used - when it was due for replacement, the trolleybus was abandoned almost everywhere in favor of diesel buses that could be used independently of the contact wire. This development came to an end when, in 1985, the Kaiserslautern trolleybus, the third-from-last classic trolleybus operation in West Germany, was discontinued.

• 

  A West Berlin Gaubschat / AEG trolleybus built in 1957

• 

  Interior view of the West Berlin car

• 

  Former trier trier trolleybus , built in 1962

• 

  Offenbacher Büssing O-Bus from 1963 in the Transport Museum in Frankfurt am Main

• 

  An O-bus of the type Trolleybus Solingen , here 1986 in Wuppertal-Vohwinkel

GDR

In May 1945 there were four trolleybus companies in the Soviet occupation zone (SBZ), these were the networks in Eberswalde , Leipzig , Zwickau and Gera . The further development ran largely parallel to West Germany, in quick succession seven more companies were opened in what was later to become the GDR : Greiz (September 1945), Dresden (1947), Weimar and Erfurt (1948), Potsdam (1949) and Magdeburg (July 1951).

The last GDR trolleybus operation of that era opened in the capital Berlin in August 1951 - the two Berlin trolleybus lines from the 1930s, on the other hand, were both in the western part of the city. However, the West Berlin line A 31 ran in the area of ​​Nennhauser Damm after 1945 for about 800 meters in the area of ​​the Soviet zone. Strangely enough, this only affected the direction of travel into the city, the inner German border ran exactly in the middle of the road and thus between the two directional contact lines. The increasing expansion of the border security systems there ultimately led to the line being discontinued in 1952.

With eleven companies the trolleybus development in the east reached its peak. However, the decline began in the GDR as early as 1969, and by 1977 eight of these networks were shut down again. In the big cities concerned, the tram was used as a means of mass transport, in the small town of Greiz bus service was considered sufficient. Only the trolleybus operations in Eberswalde, Potsdam and Weimar survived this large wave of shutdowns. The GDR thus did not follow the trend in the socialist brother countries , where the trolleybus played an increasingly important role in city traffic at that time. One reason for this special development in the area of ​​the Council for Mutual Economic Aid (RGW) was the supply of trolleybus vehicles and the spare parts situation, which in the GDR was extremely poor even for the conditions at the time. The trolleybus production of LOWA , which began in 1950, had to be stopped again at the end of 1957, as a result of a decision by the Council for Mutual Economic Aid, only Czechoslovak Škoda trolleybuses were allowed to be imported from now on. From 1970 the GDR could no longer introduce trolleybuses due to its trade balance deficit , and Škoda temporarily gave up trolleybus production at that time. This only changed again in the first half of the 1980s, when all three remaining GDR companies purchased the new Škoda 14 Tr . From 1985 onwards, only Hungarian Ikarus articulated trolleybuses were imported.

Shortly before the political change in 1989 , the trolleybus in the GDR experienced another renaissance for reasons of energy policy . The aim of this policy was to save expensive imported oil and instead promote the use of domestic lignite . The Hoyerswerda trolleybus was opened in October 1989; construction work on the Suhl trolleybus was canceled in the spring of 1990 shortly before completion. The plants planned in Neubrandenburg , Stendal , Stralsund and Wismar , however, did not get beyond the planning phase. The projects were brought down by the political upheaval, not least because there were enough used or brand-new buses from West Germany available at the time. Instead, a few years after German reunification - in addition to the trolleybus in Hoyerswerda that had only recently opened - the traditional companies in Weimar and Potsdam were also shut down. Only the network in Eberswalde has survived as the only East German trolleybus operation to this day.

• 

  1949: A VEB LOWA Werdau trolleybus train at the Leipzig spring fair

• 

  1954 in East Berlin

• 

  1969: a Škoda 9 Tr in Erfurt

• 

  January 1990: an Ikarus articulated trolleybus in Eberswalde

Austria

In Austria, the renaissance of the trolleybus began with a shutdown. As a result of the annexation of Austria , the last Austrian operation from the time before the First World War, the Wiener Gleislose Bahn Pötzleinsdorf – Salmannsdorf , had to be closed in October 1938. A conversion for the then newly introduced right-hand traffic was rejected, and the world's last system with contact carts was technically out of date.

But as early as 1940 - parallel to developments in Germany - Austria 's first modern trolleybus operation was opened with the Salzburg trolleybus, and the Graz trolleybus went into operation the following year . In 1944, four other companies followed with the Innsbruck trolleybus , the Kapfenberg trolleybus , the Linz trolleybus and the Klagenfurt network , before Vienna finally received a modern trolleybus in 1946 with line 22 from the Währinger Gürtel to Salmannsdorf . In the capital, however, the trolleybus could never prevail against the tram, it always stayed with this one line. Line 24 from Heiligenstadt to Klosterneuburg , which was planned in 1943 , could never be opened due to the war. As the last Austrian city in this era, the trolleybus Leoben finally started operating in 1949 . On the other hand, the Sankt Lambrecht trolleybus, which operated from 1945 to 1951, had a special position ; it was mainly used for freight transport.

In 1958, the discontinuation of Vienna's only trolleybus line led to the decline of the trolleybus transport system in Austria as well. This was followed by the tasks of the companies in Klagenfurt (1963), Graz (1967), Leoben (1973) and Innsbruck (1976), leaving only three of the previous eight networks.

The trolleybus experienced an intermediate high in Austria when the Innsbruck public transport company resumed trolleybus traffic in 1988 . However, this was only temporary, in February 2007 the two Innsbruck trolleybus lines were switched back to diesel bus operation. These in turn were replaced in 2017 by the extensive expansion of the Innsbruck tram network . After the small operation in Kapfenberg was shut down in 2002, this was the second task of an Austrian trolleybus operation in recent times.

Switzerland

After the early overland operation between Friborg and Farvagny was given up in May 1932, the first modern operation in Switzerland was opened only shortly afterwards in October 1932 with the Lausanne trolleybus . In quick succession, other Swiss cities were equipped with trolleybuses, including the Winterthur trolleybus in 1938 and the Zurich trolleybus in 1939 . In 1940 four systems went into operation, in addition to three other city networks - the Neuchâtel trolleybus , the Biel / Bienne trolleybus and the Bern trolleybus - this was the Altstätten – Berneck regional transport company of the Rheintalische Verkehrsbetriebe . The Basel trolleybus and the Lucerne trolleybus followed in 1941, and finally the Geneva trolleybus in 1942 .

This development continued after the Second World War. In 1948, the Val de Ruz trolleybus opened another overland service, which was also linked to the neighboring network in Neuchâtel the following year. From 1949 trolleybuses operated again with the Freiburg trolleybus, and in the same year the first line of the La Chaux-de-Fonds trolleybus went into operation. This was followed by the St. Gallen trolleybus (1950), the Thun – Beatenbucht trolleybus (1952), the Lugano trolleybus (1954) and the Vevey – Villeneuve trolleybus (1957) before the 18th and so far last modern operation in 1966 with the Schaffhausen trolleybus Switzerland was opened.

Five of these networks have since been suspended. First the three overland operations (Rheintal 1977, Thunersee 1982, Val de Ruz 1984), then in 2001 the operation in Lugano. The hiring was not least due to the high costs of new vehicles. Because of the unusually high voltages of 1000 or 1100 volts - instead of the usual 600 volts - no standard vehicles were available. Basel ceased operations in 2008 and replaced its trolleybuses with natural gas buses .

This makes Basel the only Swiss city that has a tram network but no trolleybus routes. Overall, 13 of the 18 modern Swiss trolleybus companies served as replacements for the trams that used to run there. Only in Basel, Bern, Geneva, Neuchâtel and Zurich do the trolleybuses function or function as a supplement to the tram.

Special forms no longer used

One-pole contact system

In the course of the development of the trolleybus, people repeatedly experimented with different single-rod contact systems, but they did not succeed in the long run. Like the two-pole contact system, the single-pole contact system is also an invention of the German trolleybus pioneer Max Schiemann . From 1907 he equipped all of the new lines opened by his company for trackless railways Max Schiemann & Co. with it, these were the Mülhausen Stadtbahn , the Gleislose Bahn Pirano – Portorose , the Drammen Elektriske Bane and the Gleislose Bahn Blankenese – Marienhöhe .

The catenary is also bipolar in the single-pole contact system, but the two overhead wires are arranged much closer to each other at a distance of only 15 centimeters than was usual with the first Schiemann systems (50 centimeters) or is common with today's systems (60 centimeters ). However, the vehicles used for this have only one pantograph rod instead of the usual two. This is equipped with a double-pole current collector head, plus and minus poles were brought together within the single pole to the vehicle.

The idea was later taken up again in a modified form by the BBC company from Mannheim . In the BBC's system, however, the two wires were 20 centimeters apart. Advantages such as a more elegant appearance, weight savings and greater maneuverability were ascribed to an O-bus system with a single-rod contact system. The unscheduled turning possibility at any intersection was praised as a particular advantage, and turning loops could also be dispensed with at the end of the route. When driving over switches, a button mounted in the middle of the pantograph head took over the guidance in a U-shaped, tension-free rail. Three German trolleybus companies were equipped with this, but the further developed system did not prove itself either:

• Zwickau trolleybus - opened in 1938, converted to the regular system in 1941/42
• Gera trolleybus - opened in 1939, converted to the regular system in 1943
• Eberswalde trolleybus - opened in 1940, converted to the regular system in 1951

Other single-pole contact systems briefly existed in Great Britain. These were Nottingham in the mid-1930s and Glasgow in the late 1940s. The contact wires were each stretched 6.1  inches apart, that is, 15.5 centimeters. Likewise, the trolleybuses in Shanghai (from 1914) and Penang (from 1924) were initially operated according to this principle.

In addition, Philadelphia used a single-rod contact system in the early years, the network there opened in 1923. However, the wires were suspended at a normal distance from one another, the pantograph forked in the upper area. This principle also did not work. The last system in the world with a single-rod contact system was ultimately the factory set up by Schiemann in Drammen, Norway, which was completely discontinued in 1967.

• 

  Blankenese – Marienhöhe (1911 to 1914) was the last route laid by Schiemann

• 

  1917: an early single-rod trolleybus of British provenance in Shanghai

• 

  1940: Type MPE 1 trolleybus in Eberswalde, equipped with the BBC single rod system

double decker

SYPTE prototype from 1985, the world's penultimate, newly built double-decker trolleybus

One of the five Hamburg double-deckers

Double-decker trolleybuses are another way to increase capacity, but currently there are no such buses in the world. They were primarily a British specialty, particularly the Associated Equipment Company vehicles based on the famous London Routemaster . Other manufacturers were Associated Equipment Company (AEC), British United Traction (BUT), Crossley Brothers , Guy , Leyland , Karrier and Sunbeam .

The first double-decker trolleybus ran in Hove as early as 1914 . This was an example with an open upper deck - technically correct called a deck seat wagon - and power consumption via a contact cart. Later on, deck seat cars with pantographs ran in Bournemouth and Hastings , which were attached to a special roof structure. Outside of the United Kingdom, double-decker trolleybuses were rarely seen, other cities where they were used were:

• Adelaide
• Barcelona - there were 27 BUT 9651T cars produced by Maquitrans in 1953
• Durban
• Hamburg - five 562 DD cars produced in 1953 ran there
• Johannesburg
• Cape Town
• Moscow - ten JaTB-3 cars produced in 1938/39 operated there
• Porto - there were twenty-six cars produced by British United Traction in 1958
• Sydney

In addition, twelve Spanish trolleybus companies received a total of 125 used trolleybuses of the type BUT 9641T / Metrovick / Metropolitan Camell from London in 1962 when operations there were discontinued.

Somewhat problematic with this design is the short distance between the vehicle roof and the overhead contact line, it requires specially developed pantographs and the maximum height - including pantographs - according to the clearance profile of the road traffic regulations. According to this, special permits are required for vehicles higher than 4.0 meters. A special type of double-decker trolleybuses were the 30 one  -and-a-half-deckers from the manufacturers Ludewig and Vetter , they were produced for Aachen , Hildesheim , Osnabrück and Wuppertal . Also the ES6 , a prototype of a double- decker articulated overhead line bus developed in the GDR .

In 1985 the manufacturer Dennis delivered a double-decker trolleybus based on the Dennis Dominator omnibus type to the South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive (SYPTE) . However, it was only used for experimental purposes, the associated test track was a mile long and led around the SYPTE depot in Doncaster .

More recently, the Citybus public transport company in Hong Kong tested a double-decker trolleybus based on the Dennis Dragon type . The trial operation took place without passengers on a 300 meter long test track in the depot in Wong Chuk Hang and lasted from 2001 to 2004.

• 

  Deck seat car built in 1935 from Bournemouth in the East Anglia Transport Museum

• 

  Upper deck of a deck seat car from the passenger's perspective, directly above the contact wires

• 

  Typical British double decker in the Black Country Living Museum

• 

  Double decker from Porto and one and a half decker from Aachen in the Trolleybus Museum Sandtoft

• 

  A JaTB-3 biplane in Moscow, 1937

Roller pantograph

In the 1930s, the Siemens company in Germany experimented with the Dickinson roller pantographs known from the tram instead of the grinding shoes commonly used on trolleybuses. However, the principle was modified a little, between the roller head and the current collector rod, in addition to a second insulation, a resilient connecting element was installed. It was used to absorb impacts acting on the roller.

These tests took place in Berlin and on the overland line from Mettmann to Gruiten. However, the roller pantograph principle did not prove itself with the O-bus, the contact rollers led to strong arcing and thus, in some cases, to burn-up of the copper overhead line. In contrast, the tried and tested sanding pads allow a larger contact surface and thus a lower current density and spark formation.

Ironing trolley

In order to be able to move trolleybuses with the help of a conventional single-pole tram overhead line, so-called bow trolleys were used in some cities in the past . These custom-made products were found in Bremen , Stockholm , Zurich and on the Ulm trolleybus , for example . These were one or two-axle rail trailers with a hoop or pantograph . In Bremen, for example, a former rail tower car was used for this purpose. These cars were pulled behind by the trolleybus and supplied it with the required power by means of a cable connector. In this way, in the cities mentioned, the vehicles were able to reach their depot or the main workshop, which is located away from the actual trolleybus routes, on their own. For the same purpose, Stadtwerke Münster used a retired tram as a contact car for a while, which was also pulled behind by the trolleybuses.

Additional drives

All Service Vehicle in New Jersey

In the United States, so-called All Service Vehicles (ASV) operated as scheduled in Newark (until 1948) and Camden (until 1947) as early as 1935 . These were trolleybuses with an additional propane gas drive, which served as a generator for the electric motor. This system was considered to be extremely progressive for the time; among other things, an automatic single-wire system was already in use. They are considered to be the forerunners of today's modern duo buses .

Autofilobus in Rome

On March 10, 1938, the first two autofilobus and filobus diesel-elettrici two-system vehicles were put into operation in Rome . Four more of these three-axle cars with the type designation AR 110A will follow by the end of the year. The manufacturer was Alfa Romeo, the electrical equipment came from CGE. However, the vehicles with the road numbers 7001, 7003, 7005, 7007, 7009 and 7011 only proved their worth to a limited extent; the last one went out of service in 1952.

Two-motor vehicles in Basel, Lucerne, Oldenburg and Tétouan

Other forerunners of the duo buses are the vehicles from Germany, Morocco and Switzerland , which are referred to as two-motor vehicles , similar to the two -motor locomotives .

From the start of operation of the network from 1941 to 1966, two vehicles of the type FBW / SWS / BBC 1 MHe were in operation in Lucerne; they had an output of 74 kilowatts. These were two former diesel buses with diesel-electric drive, built in 1939, which were converted in the company's own workshop, as the first Lucerne trolleybus series could only be delivered with a delay due to the war. The two Basel cars were similar to the Lucerne type, but had a Hess body and were in use from 1941 to 1975. They were also rebuilt by the transport companies themselves and mostly served trolleybus routes and only in exceptional cases bus routes.

In 1948 , the private entrepreneur Theodor Pekol from Oldenburg built two such two-vehicle vehicles in his own workshop. However, the two vehicles with road numbers 98 and 99 did not prove their worth, which is why they were converted into pure diesel buses at the beginning of the 1950s.

In Morocco , between 1950 and 1975, two-motor vehicles ran on an eleven-kilometer overland route between Tétouan and the seaside resort of Río Martín , now known as Martil . Because it passed the Tetouan Sania Ramel airport between kilometer 4 and kilometer 7 , no catenary could be installed on this section. The vehicles used there were therefore equipped with an additional diesel engine installed in the rear at right angles to the direction of travel, which drove an electric generator . They were made by Saurer , Material y Construcciones SA in Barcelona and BBC.

Generator trailer

Another option trolley buses without auxiliary drive and without catenary move around are called generator - trailer . The single-axle vehicles are coupled at the rear and supply the O-bus motor with electricity via a connection cable. If a car is left lying somewhere in the network due to a pantograph damage, for example, it can drive to the depot independently without having to be towed away. They were used in Basel and Baden-Baden, among others, in Hradec Králové line 1 to Kluky was even served by a generator trailer in scheduled passenger service from 1986 to 2001. The Friborg Tram Club also owns such a generator trailer. The self-made car is used to move the museum trolleybus number 34 - it is not approved for overhead line operation. From 1953 a towed generator was in use in Graz . It was built especially to be able to transfer the vehicles of the Straßganger line - albeit at reduced speed - to the car hall in Webling , to which there was no contact line connection.

Battery trailer

In the first half of the 1980s, the Škoda company experimented with single-axle battery trailers. These could accommodate the voluminous batteries without major structural changes having to be made to the trolleybus itself. The batteries used came from VARTA , and they were charged using a special 380 volt, 50  Hz network . Because the transport companies showed little interest in this solution, the concept of battery trailers for trolleybuses was no longer pursued.

However, such battery trailers are not an invention of Škoda; between 1975 and 1988 there were 22 electric buses with such trailers in Mönchengladbach and Düsseldorf . However, these MAN SL-E 200 cars were not trolleybuses. Nevertheless, they were retrofitted with pantographs in order to be able to receive electrical energy at the terminal station. The time-consuming replacement of the battery pack in the depot was no longer necessary.

Oldest companies

Trolleybus in Shanghai

The oldest continuously operating trolleybus network in the world is located in Shanghai, People's Republic of China. It opened on November 15, 1914. The Swiss city of Lausanne ranks second . The trolleybus network there has been in operation without interruption since October 2, 1932.

The trolleybus network in Philadelphia was opened nine years earlier, on October 14, 1923. However, operations were suspended for five years between 2003 and 2008. Dayton in the US state Ohio is in third place . The city's trolleybus network has been in operation without interruption since April 23, 1933.

In Germany, the oldest continuously operating trolleybus company was founded on November 3rd, 1940 in Eberswalde .

In Austria, the city of Salzburg has the oldest continuously operating trolleybus network, opened on October 1, 1940.

particularities

• In the course of the discontinuation of the Trier trolleybus operation, the Trier municipal utilities converted their articulated trolleybuses of the type HS 160 OSL-G, which were still in mint condition, into diesel buses between 1967 and 1972 . These were then used until the 1990s. Likewise, the Niederrheinische Verkehrsbetriebe , which in 1968 converted their eleven articulated trolleybuses that had not yet been written off into diesel buses. They operated in this form until 1975. And in Hildesheim, too, in 1969 six trolleybuses that were no longer needed were converted into diesel buses.
• In the Peruvian capital Lima , trolleybus operations were discontinued in 1931 - just three years after operations began in 1928. The six trolleybuses from the manufacturer Richard Garrett & Sons , which were still in mint condition , were then, curiously, converted into trams, this conversion is considered to be unique in the world.
• Body parts were available in large quantities for the MTB-82 series of O-buses built from 1946 . As a result, existing parts were used from 1947 for series production of the MTW-82 tram series .
• Another special feature were the bidirectional O-buses on the overland route from Liège to Seraing . They each had two pairs of pantographs oriented in opposite directions and operated from 1936 to 1964. Two-way trolleybuses were always extremely rare.
• During the Second World War , battery-operated trolleybuses were used as tractors for several truck trailers . This type of operation was caused by the fuel shortage typical of the war and could be observed in Salzburg and Klagenfurt.
• The trolleybuses in Singapore used to have a first and a second carriage class .

• 

  The MTB-82 trolleybus series, which used to be widespread in the USSR ...

• 

  ... supplied the body for the MTW-82 tram .

• 

  Rare bidirectional trolleybus in the Musée de Transports en commun du Pays de Liège

• 

  Two-class trolleybus in Singapore with color differentiation of the two compartments, first class on the right

Separate tariffs for trolleybus traffic

Tickets with a tiered tariff from Bucharest, issued in the 1980s

Typical of the real socialist states of the Council for Mutual Economic Aid used to be staggered transport tariffs . Here, an explicit distinction was made between trolleybuses and other urban means of transport. In the former USSR, for example, after the currency reform of 1961, a tram ticket cost three kopecks , a trolleybus ticket four kopecks and a ticket for the bus, the underground tram - that is, the Metrotram Krywyj Rih or the Metrotram Volgograd - or the metro five Kopecks. Similar in Romania in the 1980s, but where the tariffs varied from city to city:

Bucharest in the 1960s:	Tram and trolleybus: one section 0.25 lei , several sections 0.35 lei. Bus: one section 0.50 lei , maximum rate 3.00 lei
Bucharest in the 1980s:	Tram one lei, trolley bus 1.50 lei, bus 1.75 lei.
Cluj and Timișoara :	Tram one lei, trolley bus 1.25 lei, bus 1.50 lei.
Brașov :	Tram one lei, trolley bus 1.10 lei, bus 1.25 lei.

Poland and Hungary followed a somewhat different approach, where the trolleybus was on a par with the tram and only the bus had a higher fare. In Warsaw, for example, a trolleybus or tram ride cost only one zloty at times , while the local transport company MZK charged one and a half zloty for a bus trip. Likewise in Budapest , where from 1963 the tram and trolleybus cost one forint and the bus one and a half forints.

After the political turning point in 1989, the practice of separate urban transport tariffs was abandoned in almost the entire Eastern Bloc . An exception was Aqtöbe in Kazakhstan , where in 2013 - the year the trolleybus was discontinued - a bus trip cost 50 tenge and a trolleybus only 35 tenge . The same applies to the Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar , where in 2006 a bus trip with 200 tögrög was even twice as expensive as a trolleybus trip with only 100 tögrög. In some cases, however, separate tickets are still being issued in Eastern Europe. These cost the same, but, as in the past, are designed in different colors.

In Western Europe, for example, the Wiener Verkehrsbetriebe (WVB) issued its own transfer tickets for their only trolleybus line 22 at the time . In 1947, for example, a transitional week-long tram / light rail <> bus cost six schillings, a transitional tram / light rail <> trolleybus only five schillings.

• 

  Difference in prices between trams, trolleys and buses in the USSR

• 

  Price difference between tram and trolleybus on the one hand and bus on the other in Warsaw

• 

  Lochentwerter -Fahrscheine from Budapest, on top of the bus and down for a trolley bus and tram

• 

  Tariff sheet of the Wiener Verkehrsbetriebe from 1947 with a separate trolleybus tariff

Preservation and operation of historical facilities and vehicles

A short stretch of overhead contact line and a historical stop sign in this former turning loop remind of the Prague trolleybus that was discontinued in 1972

All over the world, numerous traffic museums , transport companies , associations and private individuals endeavor to recondition or maintain historically valuable trolleybuses and associated equipment and contact line technology. Other wagons have survived as a technical monument , as a gazebo or on playgrounds to this day. The oldest surviving car is the not operational car 23 from Toronto, Canada, built in 1922. The oldest trolleybus in Europe is the also non-operational trolleybus 12 from Keighley, it was built in 1924. The oldest functional trolleybus is the car 210 from Christchurch in New Zealand, built in 1931, and the oldest functioning trolleybus in Europe is the Lausanne trolleybus TL 2, built in 1932 .

In many cities there is regular operation with museum cars - in Great Britain, New Zealand and the United States there are even independent museum facilities with specially constructed catenary. A two-kilometer museum bus route is also being prepared in the Swedish capital Stockholm.

In detail, these are the following institutions, transport companies and private individuals are not listed for reasons of clarity:

Trolleybus Museum Solingen (D) Monument Preservation Association for Local Transport Berlin , Trolleybus working group (D) German Museum of Technology Berlin - DTM (D) Stuttgart Historic Trams eV (D) Transport Museum Frankfurt am Main (D) Transport Center of the Deutsches Museum (D) Hanover Tram Museum - HSM (D) Working Group on Historical Local Transport Leipzig eV (D) Omnibus Club Munich eV - OCM (D) Pro trolleybus Salzburg (A) Nostalgic railways in Carinthia (A) Museum Tramway Mariazell (A) Vienna Tramway Museum (A) Trolleybus Association Switzerland - TVS (CH) Tram Museum Zurich (CH) Historical Züri-Bus Association (CH) Tram Association Bern (CH) Association Neuchâteloise des Amis du Tramway (CH) Association RétroBus Léman - ARBL (CH) Association genevoise du trolleybus - AGTB (CH) Tramclub Friborg (CH) Skjoldenæsholm Tram Museum (DK) Stockholm Tram Museum (S) Bergens Tekniske Museum (N) Museo nazionale dei trasporti (I) Musée des transports urbains, interurbains et ruraux - AMTUIR (F) Musée des transports urbains de Saint-Étienne et sa région (F) Histo Bus Grenoblois (F) Museum of Transport urbain Bruxellois (B) Musée de Transports en commun (B) Vlaams Tram- en Autobusmuseum - VlaTAM (B) Trolleybus Museum Arnhem (NL) Veteraan Autobussen Foundation (NL) Associação Portuguesa dos Entusiastas por Troleicarros (P) Muzeum městské hromadné dopravy v Praze (CZ) Technické muzeum v Brně (CZ) Közlekedési Múzeum (H) Trolleybus Museum Sandtoft (GB) / with transport East Anglia Transport Museum (GB) / with operation Black Country Living Museum (GB) / with driving

Ipswich Transport Museum (GB) Bournemouth Heritage Transport Center (UK) Cardiff and South Wales Trolleybus Project (GB) London Transport Museum (GB) Hastings Trolleybus Restoration Group (GB) Museum of Transport in Manchester (GB) Keighley Bus Museum Trust (GB) Science Museum at Wroughton (GB) Tramway Museum Society Ireland (GB) Ulster Folk and Transport Museum (GB) Aston Manor Road Transport Museum (UK) Glasgow Museum of Transport Bradford Trolleybus Association (GB) Bradford Industrial Museum (GB) British Commercial Vehicle Museum (GB) Kirkleatham Old Hall Museum (GB) Milestones Museum (GB) North of England Open Air Museum (GB) Rotherham Trolleybus Group (GB) Westgate Transport Museum (GB) National Trolleybus Association - NTA (GB) National Transport Museum of Ireland (IRL) Vapriikki-museossa Tampereella (FIN) Illinois Railway Museum (USA) / running Seashore Trolley Museum (USA) / with transport Reynolds-Alberta Museum (CDN) Halton County Radial Railway (CDN) Transit Museum Society (CDN) Adelaide Electric Traction Museum (AUS) Brisbane Tramway Museum (AUS) Sydney Tramway Museum (AUS) Powerhouse Museum (AUS) Australian Electric Transport Museum (AUS) Perth Electric Tramway Society Museum (AUS) Tasmanian Transport Museum (AUS) Foxton Trolleybus Museum (NZ) / with operation Ferrymead Heritage Park (NZ) / with operation Museum of Transport and Technology (NZ) Museu do Transporte Público Gaetano Ferolla (BR)

• 

  Historic Škoda 9 Tr on a special trip in Eberswalde

• 

  Historic Fiat 656F trolleybus from the early days of operation in Piraeus

• 

  Historical operation in Salzburg with a trolleybus of the type ÜHIIIs

• 

  Museum operation in the Black Country Living Museum

• 

  French Vétra trolleybuses in the Musée des transports urbains, interurbains et ruraux

• 

  A Soviet SiU-5 in the Közlekedési Múzeum in Budapest

• 

  Antwerp trolleybus in the Vlaams Tram- en Autobusmuseum

• 

  Canada: Unrefurbished wagon on Halton County Radial Railway

• 

  The Lausanne TL 2 is the oldest trolleybus in Europe

• 

  Car number 210 from Christchurch is the oldest working trolleybus in the world

See also

• List of trolleybus systems
• List of former trolleybus systems
• List of manufacturers of trolleybuses
• History of the electric drive of rail vehicles
• Catenary trucks

literature

• Bruce, Ashley R. Lombard-Gerin and Inventing the Trolleybus . (2017) Trolleybooks (UK). ISBN 978-0-904235-25-8 .
• Mattis Schindler: Trolleybuses in Germany . Volume 1: Berlin - Brandenburg - Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Schleswig-Holstein - Hamburg - Bremen - Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt - Thuringia - Saxony, former German eastern territories. Ed .: Ludger Kenning. Kenning, Nordhorn 2009, ISBN 978-3-933613-34-9 .
• Ludger Kenning, Mattis Schindler (Hrsg.): Trolleybuses in Germany . Volume 2: North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse. Kenning, Nordhorn 2011, ISBN 978-3-933613-31-8 .
• Gerhard Bauer: From the trackless to the trolleybus. The development between 1882 and 1945. Verlag für Verkehrsliteratur, Dresden 1997, ISBN 3-9804303-1-6 .
• Werner Stock: Trolleybus systems in Germany. The development of the overhead line omnibus operations in the German Reich, in the Federal Republic of Germany and in the German Democratic Republic since 1930. Busch, Bielefeld 1987, ISBN 3-926882-00-X .
• Verlag Slezak (Hrsg.): Obus in Austria. Slezak, Vienna 1979, ISBN 3-900134-62-6 ( railway collection books . No. 16).
• Herbert KE Wöber: Early trolleybuses 1907–1938. Catenary automobiles in Austria-Hungary. Self-published, Vienna 1994.
• Alfred Schiffer: The modern electric local transport, the trolleybus. 1936. (Reprint: Röhr-Verlag for special traffic literature , Krefeld 1983, ISBN 3-88490-145-1 )
• Felix Förster: How the “trackless railway” learned to roll. Trolleybuses in Germany from 1882 to 1928. In: Straßenbahn Magazin 12/2018, GeraMond , pp. 66–70.
• Felix Förster: 20 years of prosperity. Trolleybuses in Germany from 1930. In: Straßenbahn Magazin 01/2019, GeraMond , pp. 58–62.

Web links

Commons : Trolleybus 1  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Commons : Trolleybus 2  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Ludger Kenning - Historical treatises of numerous former trolleybus companies

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Thoughts from Werner von Siemens ( Memento of the original from December 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ↑ ^{a b} Trolleybus history - current collector design
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i} Trackless railways in the encyclopedia of railways
4. ^ Kimes, Beverly Rae (editor) and Clark, Henry Austin, jr .: The Standard Catalog of American Cars 1805–1942 , 2nd edition, Krause Publications, Iola WI 54990, USA (1985), ISBN 0-87341-111- 0 , p. 234 (English)
5. ↑ The Horseless Age (Vol. 2) ( Memento of the original from February 23, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . London: Forgotten Books. (Original work published 1896), pp. 253–254  
6. ^ Bruce, Ashley R. Lombard-Gerin and Inventing the Trolleybus . (2017) Trolleybooks (UK). ISBN 978-0-904235-25-8
7. ↑ Patent Trolley for electrically driven vehicles on google.de
8. ↑ Kenning p. 67.
9. ↑ The first trolleybus line in Eberswalde
10. ^ History of the Eberswalder trolleybus traffic
11. ↑ Patrick Kupper: Chemins de fer sans rail en Suisse - a contribution to the history of the trolleybus / trackless railways in Switzerland - a contribution to the history of the trolleybus. In: Endstation Ostring Heft 23 (12 / 98-03 / 99), pp. 4-6 (bilingual, here quoted from the German text).
12. ↑ Jean-Philippe Coppex: The Swiss interurban trolley buses. Verlag Endstation Ostring, Geneva 2008, ISBN 978-3-9522545-3-0 , pp. 7 and 46-47.
13. ↑ Patent US491988 A by Alfred Dickinson from February 21, 1893
14. ^ Railways to Engelberg , ISBN 3-907014-10-3 , p. 28
15. ↑ Operation and performance of the trackless railway
16. ↑ Documentation Hermann Kummler-Sauerländer, electrical and line construction pioneer , accessed on February 25, 2012 (PDF; 93 kB)
17. ↑ Worldwide renaissance of the trolleybuses ( Memento of the original from January 29, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , litra.ch, accessed on February 25, 2012  
18. ↑ Kenning p. 22.
19. ↑ ^{a b} The Dresden Haide Railway. dresdner-nahverkehr.de, March 1, 2005, archived from the original on September 28, 2007 ; Retrieved February 1, 2013 . 
20. ↑ Leipziger Strasse at www.dresdner-stadtteile.de
21. ^ Bruce, Ashley R. Lombard-Gerin and Inventing the Trolleybus . (2017) Trolleybooks (UK). ISBN 978-0-904235-25-8
22. ↑ Charles Nithard on www.wwgenealogy.com ( Memento of the original from July 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
23. ^ Lexicon of all technology, edited by Otto Lueger, 2nd edition. 1904-1920
24. ^ The Stoll Trolleybus Systems , tramwayinfo.com
25. ↑ In Ludwigsburg there was already an overhead line. (PDF; 1.2 MB)
26. ^ The Laurel Canyon Utilities Company on The Electric Railway Historical Association of Southern California.
27. ↑ Jean-Philippe Coppex: The Swiss interurban trolley buses / Les trolleybus régionaux en Suisse. Verlag Endstation Ostring, special edition No. 2, ISBN 978-3-9522545-3-0 .
28. ↑ ^{a b} Up or down? - The development in the trolleybus sector , trolleymotion.com
29. ↑ ^{a b c} Vukan R. Vuchic: Urban Transit Systems and Technology
30. ^ From the history of the development of the automobile In: Motor vehicle technology 4/1954, p. 98
31. ↑ 関 西特 集 . (No longer available online.) In: 日 経 関 西 コ ン シ ェ ル ジ ュ . Nihon Keizai Shimbun , formerly in the original ; Retrieved June 13, 2009 (Japanese).  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.    
32. ↑ 軌道 無 し に 走 る 電車 運 転 認可 さ る. 香 枦 園 停留 所 六甲 苦 楽 園 間 今夏 に は 開通 す る . In: Osaka Asahi Shimbun , special edition Kobe . February 14, 1923 ( digitized version of the Kobe University Library ).
33. ↑ 事業 全体 . Tokyo Prefecture Transportation Office, accessed June 13, 2009 (Japanese). 
34. ↑ か わ さ き シ ニ ア 応 援 サ イ ト ： 自 分 年表 . (PDF) (No longer available online.) City of Kawasaki, formerly in the original ; Retrieved June 13, 2009 (Japanese).  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.    
35. ↑ あ ゆ み . (No longer available online.) Yokohama City Transportation Bureau, archived from original on December 25, 2008 ; Retrieved June 13, 2009 (Japanese). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
36. ↑ 広 報 な ご や 平 成 １９ 年月 号 東区 . (PDF) (No longer available online.) City of Nagoya, April 2007, formerly in the original ; Retrieved June 13, 2009 (Japanese, 3.2 MB).  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.    
37. ↑ 京 都市 交通局 の あ ゆ み ～ 年表 ～ . (No longer available online.) Kyoto City Department of Transportation, archived from the original on October 11, 2008 ; Retrieved June 13, 2009 (Japanese). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
38. ↑ 大阪 タ イ ム ト ラ ベ ル Vol. 3 . (No longer available online.) In: Osaka BB Net. City of Osaka, formerly in the original ; Retrieved June 13, 2009 (Japanese).  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.    
39. ↑ MLIT (Ed.): 長 岡 市 営 無 軌 条 電車 (Nagaoka-shiei Mukijō Densha) .
40. ^ History of the Eberswalder trolleybus traffic, period 1842 - April 1945
41. ^ The German trolleybus operations from 1930 to 1995 , solingen-internet.de
42. ↑ ^{a b} Trams in Duisburg, History of the Moers-Homberg Tram ( Memento from April 19, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
43. ↑ The trolleybus in Solingen - brief review
44. ↑ Dr. Rer. Pole. Habil. Dr. Jur.Fritz Voigt, The Development of the Transport System, page 680
45. ↑ Dr. Gabler's Traffic Lexicon, edited by Professor Dr. Walter Linden, Business Publishing Dr. Th. Gabler, Wiesbaden, Statistical Annex, page 3
46. ^ Jürgen Lehmann: The trolleybus operation in Rheydt 1952-1973
47. ↑ Kenning p. 33.
48. ↑ DVN Berlin - Lowa trolleybus train W602a and trailer W700
49. ↑ Kenning p. 15.
50. ↑ The planned Vienna trolleybus line 24 from Heiligenstadt to Klosterneuburg ( Memento of the original from July 28, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
51. ↑ ^{a b} Ludger Kenning: Long historical: Trolleybuses in Zwickau
52. ↑ Establishment of an O-bus system with a single rod system in Eberswalde
53. ↑ Dirk Budach: Doppeldecker-Schicksale ( Memento of the original from March 25, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Report on trolleymotion.eu, March 14, 2016, accessed on March 20, 2016 
54. ↑ Hong Kong trolleybus
55. ↑ Berlin traffic pages
56. ↑ The trolleybus today , vossloh-kiepe.com
57. ↑ Stockholm: exits without overhead lines and without auxiliary drive
58. ↑ Verkehrsbetriebe Zürich - 50 years of trolleybuses in Zürich ( Memento of the original from March 24, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
59. ↑ Ludger Kenning: Trolleybuses also drove in Ulm.
60. ^ Ludger Kenning: Tram and trolleybus in Münster
61. ↑ Autofilobus (filobus diesel-elettrici) , tramroma.com
62. ^ Paul F. Schneeberger: Verkehrsbetriebe der Stadt Luzern. Minirex AG, Lucerne, 1999, ISBN 3-907014-12-X .
63. ↑ Hess 1882–2007, 125 Years of Tradition, Innovation, Emotion , 2007, ISBN 3-85962-147-5 , page 90
64. ↑ BVB Trolleybus , tram-bus-basel.ch
65. ↑ Kenning p. 126.
66. ^ Martin Pabst: Tram & Trolley in Africa. Röhr-Verlag, Krefeld 1989, ISBN 3-88490-132-X , pp. 57-58.
67. ↑ Jürgen Lehmann: Visit of the trolleybus companies in Slovakia and the Czech Republic from April 17 to 23, 2004 ( Memento from April 18, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
68. ^ Friborg: start of delivery of twelve new trolley buses
69. ↑ https://www.eisenbahn.gerhard-obermayr.com/stadtverkehr/grazer-verkehrsbetriebe/obusbetrieb/ The trolleybus operation of the Grazer Verkehrsbetriebe on eisenbahn.gerhard-obermayr.com, accessed on June 10, 2020
70. ↑ Trolejbus 14Tr s bateriovým pohonem
71. ↑ The electric bus SL-E ( Memento of the original from September 25, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on rheinbahn.de  
72. ↑ History on eight wheels, the old-timer bus from Stadtwerke Trier
73. ↑ Ludger Kenning: The Obuszeit in Hildesheim
74. ^ The Tramways of Lima
75. ↑ Trolleybus in Salzburg 1940–1960 ( Memento of the original from January 16, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
76. ↑ www.livejournal.com
77. ^ Soviet Transport Tickets - Guide for foreign collectors
78. ^ Special print from the specialist journal Der Stadtverkehr - Issue 11 / 12-1966 and 3/1967.
79. ↑ ITB - Ghidul traseelor de transport in comun
80. ↑ Aqtöbe: Trolleybus operation stopped again ( Memento of the original from December 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , trolleymotion.ch from November 25, 2013  
81. ↑ Urban public transport Ulaanbaatar Mongolia, Presented by Mungunbayar Bat-Ochir, Trainee at Vienna University of Technology, July 17, 2006, accessed on February 16, 2018
82. ↑ Georg Rigele: What the Viennese Use - Tramways and Other Public Transport from 1945 to the Present , p. 108, online at studienverlag.at, accessed on January 29, 2019
83. ↑ New tariff , announcement of the Wiener Verkehrsbetriebe from August 1947.
84. ↑ Stockholm - progress report from the museum project  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.