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Kingston upon Hull Trolleybuses
Sorry, sold out.......
By Malcolm Wells
This is another full
British trolleybus system history, which took several years to thoroughly research, write and
publish. At the time not everyone had a home PC and handwritten
manuscripts and addenda needed typing out! This is the story of the
backbone of a town on Britain's eastern coast's municipal transport
system.
Told within 136 pages of a softbound A4-sized book, with
full-colour laminated card cover, there are three rather well-chosen
colour sections, together accounting for 13 inside colour illustrations,
which, plus the four on the cover, adequately capture the essential
flavour of the Hull trolleybus system by themselves on several counts. Firstly, they gently remind us
that apart from the 16 famous Coronations delivered with one-manning in
mind (and years ahead of their time) that there were 100 trolleybuses
before them, of the more traditional type, all two-axle, which included
Leylands and Crossleys before the War, ubiquitous Sunbeam W utilities
during the war and afterwards; and some Sunbeam F4s, ten 7ft. 6in. wide
and ten 8ft. 0in. wide, quite attractively bodied by Roe at the end of
austerity. Secondly, the streamlined livery, white droops and swoops
on prussian blue, which was part of the trolleybus story in Hull, from its
beginning to its end; Thirdly, the big route numbers, which conveyed to
the locals everything they needed to know, viz., which traffic artery they
traversed Chantelands Avenue, Newland Avenue, Beverley Road, Holderness
Road, Anlaby Road or Hessle Road; and, Fourthly, Hull's famous level
crossings. Although hilly terrain will demonstrate a particularly useful
facet of the trolleybus, Hull was flat and
particularly plagued with railway level crossings. Latterly, these played
havoc with traffic congestion and the running of a bus service to time.
But, otherwise, Hull's traffic
arteries and the dense housing streets off them were just the sort of
environment on which trolleybuses in Britain thrived the best.
We
know that no available stone was left unturned during the preparation of
this book, the result of which is that the end product could be regarded
as a role model of the sort of product that is achievable by anyone with a
will to achieve the best. Whilst the chronological history is well told
against a properly-appreciated social history of life in Hull, many of the
Appendices have been hailed as masterpieces in their own right; and as
models which other authors might care to note. Some of the statistical
information is, even today, of immense value in certain quarters. But the
book is also drawn together by 106 monotone photographs, a small part of a
truly magnificent collection by the author that he has managed to find to
illustrate some special occurrence or simply to illustrate some
nostalgically typical day-to-day sight. Hull people, it turns
out, are fairly nostalgic of their trolleybuses and wish they hadn't
disappeared without trace. Malcolm Wells, brought up in Hull and still living
relatively locally, continues to find more archive material and
contributory data from some most unlikely sources.
Total weight: 695g. id - GB17.
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