On 25/12/2020 15:31, Paul wrote:
When I was a kid, there were wires above every street. And
the buses had two poles that rode on the wires. We went all
over town with that kit. The place was well equipped with wires.
The drivers only had to get out occasionally and put the
pickups back on the wires. If the driver whipped through an
intersection too fast, sometimes a pole would come off.
And they had great acceleration too - on my favorite hill,
the driver used to floor it, to give a demo of just how much
traction power the thing had. That was a great system. And,
with no batteries, you could drive those pigs 22 hours a day,
no problem at all. And because they don't have batteries, they're
also dirt cheap.

Cardiff corporation had electric trolley buses like that, but
in the late 1960's they decided that modernisation was the
name of the game. Having to make changes to the wires when
roads and junctions were changed might have been a factor.
All the wires came down and the ornate ?cast iron posts and
poles were ripped out and scrapped.