Failed London Trolleybus outside Tiffin School, Kingston

 Outside Tiffin School, Kingston
Click on picture [296] for an enlarged version

From: "Geoff Bruce" <gbruce1030@aol.com>

Thank you for a most engaging site. I remember travelling on trolleys around Malden and Kingston in the mid-late 50's. They had long gone by the time I had returned from Midland exile in 1966. Then, I went to Tiffin School in Kingston and studied music in the building behind the broken down trolley in picture 296.

Many was the hour I spent waiting for a 213 at that spot to take me back home to New Malden.

As with Tony Kerr's experience at Malden [picture 294], I could save tuppence by getting off a stop earlier than I needed. Tuppence twice a day is quite some deal when you're twelve.

From: "Steve Donne Davis" <s.donne_davis@virgin.net>

Many congratulations indeed for the quality of your website. You have a very valuable collection of superb photos. They look like they were taken yesterday.

If it is of any interest, I was born in 1952 and used to live until the age of 7 in a rambling old vicarage at the junction of London Road and Cambridge Road, Kingston. There were points on this corner and the 602, 603, 604 and 605 all went past. Possibly, looking at the timetables now, at more than 1 bus per minute.

Sometimes the buses came off the wires and I can remember watching their conductors pulling out the long wooden pole from underneath the buses and hooking the arms back on to the wires. For a small boy, it was very exciting. Hence I have 3 Matchbox trolleybuses still. Why the buses came off, I don't know. Might the points have been set wrong or was it simply that the drivers had taken the corner too wide?

Just on noise grounds alone, the trolleybuses were far better than the Routemasters that replaced them. What was the reason given for doing away with trolleybuses? The buses themselves presumably still had years of life left in them.

My recent interest stems from a 1954 photo published recently in the local paper. This is of Eden Street, Kingston complete with 601 Trolleybus which is apparently in the Kingston Museum. Somehow I seem to have 1938 and 1940 tram and trolleybus maps. Perhaps these are not so rare.