After the wires - a photo on Flickriver

After the wires

For trolleybus enthusiasts, 31 December 1966 was a sad day. The night before, the Manchester and Ashton trolleybus system had closed for normal service, and on New Year's Eve a tour by two preserved trolleybuses - one from Manchester, the other from Rotherham - was captured by hundreds of amateur photographs. At the end the garage door closed, the power was switched off, after a few days the demolition crews started to remove the wires, and that was that.

Except for the travelling public, it wasn't. Diesel buses replaced electric trolleybuses, and commuters and shoppers still used the frequent services between Manchester and the towns along Hyde Road, Ashton New Road and Ashton Old Road. But the photographers had gone home, their beloved trolleybuses gone, so photos of post-trolleybus operation n these services aren't all that common.

Here's an exception - it's July 1967, and a 211 to Hattersely - a destination the trolleybuses never reached - waits at the terminus in Manchester's Portland Street. The bus is owned by the gloriously names Stalybridge, Hyde Mossley and Dukinfield Joint Board - usually known as SHMD - and is on a joint route with Manchester that had started in 1964 as teh trolleybus replacement programme gained pace.

SHMD buses were always a pleasant green, and someone once described their buses as 'scrubbed, rather than polished' - but they did the job well enough until the fleet was absorbed by SELNEC in 1969. You can still see an SHMD bus today, in the Museum of Transport, and we also have one of the Manchester trolleybuses that buses like number 20 here replaced.

If you'd like to know more about the Museum of Transport Greater Manchester and its collection of vintage buses, go to www.motgm.uk.

© Greater Manchester Transport Society. All rights reserved. Unauthorised reproduction is strictly prohibited and may result in action being taken to protect the intellectual property interests of the Society.

Taken in: UK / England / Manchester (show map)

Taken on: July 1, 1967

Tags:

GTU120C

Fleetline

CRG6

NCME

Northern Counties

Stalybridge

Hyde

Mossley

Dukinfield

Joint

Board

Portland

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211

Hattersley

Museum

Transport

Cheetham

Manchester

www.gmts.co.uk

www.motgm.uk

GMTS

bus

buses

Museum of Transport

GMTS collection

Greater Manchester Transport Society

Boyle Street

Cheetham Hill

M8 8UW

Greater Manchester

heritage

history

thorntons

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Sets appears in: • Tameside • Manchester streets

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