Author Malcolm Bates looks at the market forces at work during the early evolution of the trolleybus, it’s meteoric rise in the 1930s, and the skillful way in which ‘vested interests’ might have conspired to damage the image of this fume-free ‘Silent Servant’ in the more recent postwar era. It begs the question;- ‘What if?’. As in; what if Municipal Transport Engineers and their Council Committees hadn’t been in such a hurry to switch to diesel buses?

Would we still have trolleybuses in service today?

Author Malcolm Bates looks at the market forces at work during the early evolution of the trolleybus, it’s meteoric rise in the 1930s, and the skillful way in which ‘vested interests’ might have conspired to damage the image of this fume-free ‘Silent Servant’ in the more recent postwar era. It begs the question;- ‘What if?’. As in; wha....