Trolley Busses

A Memory of Uxbridge.

The queue of people waiting to the left of the picture would have been waiting for the trolley bus which ran from the terminal at the bottom of the high street (on the opposite side from The Odeon and a bit further down). The post in this photo is definitely a trolley line post and odd that the wires cannot be seen in this picture unless the focus wasn't sharp enough, alternatively that the date for this photo is wrong. The service ceased in 59 or 60 and the old posts were not completely removed until a few years later.
I used to travel by trolley, accompanied by Dad, to Shepherds Bush. We used to go to the market to get boxes of steel gramophone needles (still being manufactured in the fifties) or to get repairs done. The wind-up turntable spring would eventually slacken with age and have to be replaced etc.
I enjoyed traveling by trolley. They went at an even speed and of course were much quieter than the motor-buses. The only drawback was that the bus had to stay more or less directly under the wires. If not the contact mast would fall off the wire and then the driver had to get out and, with the aid of a long pole, get it hitched back on again.
Increased traffic and traffic holdups and the lack of a reserved bus lane meant that this happened more and more frequently until they had difficulty holding the timetable and became a frequent cause of traffic holdups.
The Uxbridge terminal was a rather rundown affair with weeds sprouting from the joins in the concrete road surface.