London Trams & Trolleybuses

The images in this publication all come from the Transport Treasury archive, and they revive for us a bygone age in London. They also remind us how different London was but a relatively short time ago. Had it not been for the Second World War the trams would have disappeared from the streets of London a decade earlier. London Transport Passenger Board, set up in 1933, had made an early decision to replace its extensive tram network with trolleybuses prior to war breaking out in 1939. After the war London Transport saw no long-term future for the trolleybuses either. The relative cheapness of oil trumped clearly trumped the environmental benefits of electric traction.