REVIEWS
Title: London Trolleybus Depots, Part One
Author: Hugh Taylor
Publisher: Adam Gordon
ISBN: 978-1-910654-12-5
Specification: 300mm x 215mm, 184pp, hardback
Price: £38.50
Forty-five years after the last routes ran, some might imagine that everything that could be published about the London trolleybus system already has been and that the appetite for more would have diminished.
But clearly not. Hugh Taylor, whose boyhood passion for these electric vehicles is as strong today, has risen to the occasion with this first of two hefty illustrated tomes on the depots that supported the system. There were 21 of them, he reminds us, 20 of them converted from or built on the sites of tram depots, and there would have been several more, including brand new facilities at Rye Lane and Stockwell, had London Transport pursued its prewar plans for trolleybuses to replace the trams of south London.
They were places where Taylor and a good many other young enthusiasts made friends with the staff, sometimes earning access by performing some of the more basic maintenance procedures. One of those friends, Tony Belton, was treated to a surprise birthday party on the occasion of such a visit when he revealed he had turned 1…
