Good comment, Tony. Particularly relevant to Wellington, where the trolleybus infrastructure was eliminated quickly and thoroughly but the vehicles sit in the depot building, mouldering away until, possibly, they are fitted with batteries for further electric service. One – 361 – has been and is apparently operating very successfully on the Airport run.

At the risk of incurring hate mail, I would observe that our current few battery buses (Wellington currently has 10 battery double deckers in successful service plus 361) perform much better than the old trolleybuses ever did, with the restrictions of overhead and often inadequate line voltage.

Readers may have noted that I promote accelerating bus electrification in my light rail newsletter, but if you really want to gorge on Wellington bus news and trolleybus nostalgia get Alan Wickens’ free Under the Wires PDF newsletter by emailingwickens@... mailto:wickens@xtra.co.nz..

Brent Efford
NZ Agent, Light Rail Transit Assn

On 13/07/2019, at 11:01 AM, Prescott lenkaprescott@...> wrote:

Possibly need to consider updating "trolley bus" to the more appropriate "electric bus" since the old "pure" trolley bus now only exists historically and modern ones morph with battery electric buses with different variations of technology across a spectrum.

Tony P