South Shields Sanddancers Forum

What are your memories of trolley buses?

My favourite memory is of loitering at the Chichester roundabout, watching them negotiate the points.

I can still hear that lovely clicking sound.

My father worked on them. Came home from the war, started
work as a points lad, then a conductor, a trolley bus driver,
and finally a motor bus driver. He worked for Shields Corporation
for 27 years. I used to take his billy can full of hot tea and meet
the bus at the top of our street to give it to him.

Mr Smith wrote:My father worked on them. Came home from the war, started
work as a points lad, then a conductor, a trolley bus driver,
and finally a motor bus driver. He worked for Shields Corporation
for 27 years. I used to take his billy can full of hot tea and meet
the bus at the top of our street to give it to him.

When I was about 18 my doctor sent me to see a specialist at Harton hospital. After giving me a grilling about going on a diet and how much I drank he asked me if I got out of breath running for a bus. When I told him no I never got out of breath he called me a liar.I told him no one from Marsden ever ran for a bus as there was a trolley bus every 3 minutes, he was not amused at my reply and refused to see me again,he died 2 years later,must have lived away from a trolley bus route.

The variety of seats, those wooden ones with no upholstery were very uncomfortable.

Pooter wrote:The variety of seats, those wooden ones with no upholstery were very uncomfortable.

They had those on the single decker buses which ran to the
Pier Head and Marsden Grotto. The old tram cars also had
the wooden slat seats.

when i was a bairn there was only a few trolley buses left on the road but i do remember when the bus conductor had to get off at the horsley hil roundabout and push the wires over to another line with a long pole

jimmywizz wrote:when i was a bairn there was only a few trolley buses left on the road but i do remember when the bus conductor had to get off at the horsley hil roundabout and push the wires over to another line with a long pole

Every trolley bus had a pole on the side for that very purpose, or
for when the trolleys came off the overhead wires. At the King
Street/ Mile End Road junction the had a "Points Lad" whose job
it was to change the trolleys over when needed, there was also
one at Laygate. For some to change direction they had a manual
linkage system, where the points lad pulled one of several handles
which were attached to a big post, which handle depended on
which route the bus was following. The old tram cars only had
one trolley as they did not need an earth connection, as they
already had one via the metal rails which they ran on.

The roundabout near the Marsden Inn was close to where I lived, we would sit on the railing near the handle the conductor had to jump off and pull for the bus to go round the roundabout, once in a while we would signal the conductor and pull down the handle for him, then just before the bus reached the points, let go, sending the bus down redwell bank to the coast.

There is a very good video called "The trolleybuses of South Shields" I don't know if it can be bought now or whether it is available on DVD. However if you ignore all the very dry commentary about the types of buses and just watch the old film of places like the roundabout at Marsden, the Chi, the Pier Head, Marsden and the Market Place to name a few it will bring back loads of memories.

It is now available on DVD and Blueray at

http://www.amazon.co.uk/South-Shields-T ... 806&sr=8-3

That's interesting as the one I have doesn't have any colour scenes in it.

Pilot wrote:The roundabout near the Marsden Inn was close to where I lived, we would sit on the railing near the handle the conductor had to jump off and pull for the bus to go round the roundabout, once in a while we would signal the conductor and pull down the handle for him, then just before the bus reached the points, let go, sending the bus down redwell bank to the coast.

pilot, shields 1st charver

Noooooo Jarrow Pete was a few years ahead of me Not to mention Baldy

jimmywizz wrote:pilot, shields 1st charver

He fits the description jimmy, but they weren't called
charvers in those days.

Pilot wrote:Noooooo Jarrow Pete was a few years ahead of me Not to mention Baldy

We used to make our own entertainment at Marsden, we would create our own firework displays by going on the rattler railway bridge at the bottom of Redwell Bank and dropping a length of metal onto the trolley bus wires.The flashes and bangs were very spectacular.

One of my earliest memories of the trolley buses is the roundabout at the Marsden Inn. Us kids used to watch with savage amusement as the conductors tried to deal with what was a difficult junction.

Yet practically overnight both the Trolley Buses and their overhead lines disappeared.

to tell the truth my granda might have been shields 1st charver, he was taken to court and fined in the 1920s or 1930s for throwing snowballs at a tramcar

If he did it 100 years ealier he might have been transported and this would be an Aussie site

My grandfather used to be first of all driving the horse drawn buses.Then moved onto trams, then trolley buses his son my uncle then drove motor buses .The pole in use was normaly a bamboo.When i first moved to Cleadon the tram rails and overhead wires still ran up the centre of King George Road.