Title: Glasgow Trolleybuses
Author: Colin Barker
Publisher: Middleton Press
ISBN: 978-1-908174-96-3
Specification: 230mm x 170mm, 96pp, softback
Price: £18.95
The Glasgow trolleybus system closed 50 years ago this coming May. It was the last new one in the UK and its opening in April 1949 made it the only one to start after World War 2.
Like most, it lasted no more than a single generation of vehicles, and indeed so short lived were the last of its routes that half the fleet gave less than 10 years’ service. By then, trolleybus abandonment had reached such a pace that if Glasgow even tried to sell these vehicles for further service, there was no obvious market for them. With the exception of three retained for preservation (of which two survive today), they were cut up for scrap.
Yet this one was one of the biggest UK trolleybus systems outside London, its peak of 194 vehicles exceeded only by Belfast’s 245. But it never attracted the public love that the city’s trams enjoyed and was probably unknown to many citizens.
As Colin Barker’s book explains, there were eight separately numbered routes, but four of these had substantial common sections and one of them, route 103, was southbound only. Four of the eig…
