Title: Cardiff Trolleybuses
Author: Peter Smith
Publisher: Adam Gordon Books
ISBN: 978-1-910654-09-5
Specification: 300mm x 215mm, 300pp, hardback
Price: £50 (£55 including postage from publisher at Kintradwell Farmhouse, Brora, Sutherland, KW9 6LU
Besides its appeal to enthusiasts living far beyond the city of Cardiff, there are parts of this book that every graduate trainee manager entering the 21st century UK bus industry should be required to read and remember.
It may be about the country’s second last new trolleybus system to be introduced and of events that ended nearly half a century ago, but some of the stories are just as relevant to anyone contemplating making decisions today.
These include the prewar general manager who assured his transport committee with absolute certainty that diesel fumes were ‘non poisonous’ and later dared to tell these same political masters not to complain to him if they ignored his advice to buy motorbuses instead of going electric.
There also is a huge lesson about unintended consequences to be learned where Peter Smith writes of the unconventional fare collection system adopted for the first eight years of the trolleybus service, and of how supposed solutions to one problem created new difficulties.
This is the history of a trolleybus system that lasted from March 1942 to January 1970 with a fleet that peaked at just 79 vehicles, the last of which arrived in May 1955. It is well written and illustrated liberally with maps and black and white and colour photographs, and full of tantalising what-might-have-been scenarios.…
