Who are we and what are we?
Typical group gathering on an
operating Sunday.
During the 1950's and 1960's the trolley bus networks in England began to
disappear very rapidly. Unlike trams for which there had been thousands of
operators, there had only been (at maximum extent) 50 trolley bus operators in
the entire United Kingdom.
With the closure of the London system (the biggest) in 1962 a number of
people began to realise too late that trolley bus preservation would be needed.
In Wolverhampton, ENGLAND, there had been an extensive trolley bus system
dating from 1923. It had also been pre-dated by various tram way systems in the
town. The Wolverhampton system, although never generating a great deal of
outside interest, had at its peak some 49 route miles of trolley buses and was
for a short period in its history, the largest system in the world at that
time.
By the 1950's, a small band of people who were known as the Wolverhampton
Trolley Bus Group had formed the (at the time laughable) idea of trying to
preserve a Wolverhampton trolley bus. Mainly due to the pushing of John Hughes
and the late Dr. E. R. Clark, this was done and Wolverhampton 433 was secured
totally apart from the rescue of Wolverhampton 616 and 654 by other groups
(neither of which have survived in running condition). It was soon realised
that this was only the start of troubles as the question was now what do you do
with a double deck bus that cannot be moved under its own power?
The bus was moved and stored in many various and dubious locations. Ex
Walsall trolley 862 joined 433 and the two were moved round together, there
being no prospect of a long term home for either. At one point both vehicles,
although being stored in a garage, were severely vandalised, and had it not
been for an ex-Walsall Corporation employee named Keith Bodley joining the
group, the repairs would have been very expensive.
During the 1970's, the initial ideas were being laid down to form a new
open air museum site to preserve the local history of the black country. Duly
the Black Country Museum came into being and the buses were given a permanent
home there, along with other types of historic vehicles such as ex West
Bromwich motor bus 174 and the "Bean" lorry, both shown above.
Another 20 years on and a complete route of overhead was erected to allow the
two buses to run along side the existing tramway. The buses began operating and
have done so over the last 10+ years. The Museum is a business and charity in
its own right, but it gets support from many friends and groups of volunteers.
The vehicles have attracted people from all walks of life, young, old, those
who remember and perhaps worked on buses and trams, those who were not even
born when tram and trolley bus operations came to an end, skilled people and
those who cannot pick up a spanner. We are all here trying to do our bit to
keep the biggest trolley bus route in the U.K. operating and we are the Black
Country Museum Transport Group.
The rest is all history............
Steve Morgan September 1999