The cost to London Transport of maintaining pavings and foundations for tramway tracks amounts on average to £102 per tram per year. This charge ceases when trolley-buses are used. However, the licence duty on a tram is 15/- per year while that for a trolley-bus is £103.
Taken out of context this seems to imply a loss of 5/- (25 pence) per vehicle. The main saving was that it passed the duty of road maintenance over to those who specialised in road maintenance (the local authority) and left the London Passenger Transport Board to concentrate on its speciality of running buses. With no rails routes could be extended or diverted as required as long as the council could be persuaded to provide suitable lamp-posts to double as trolley-wire carriers.
From its inauguration on 15th November 1936 the 607 was worked by jointly by Acton and Hanwell depots until 9th March 1937 when Hanwell provided the entire vehicle allocation for the remainder of the trolleybus years. Acton ran trolleybuses on other routes, but was closed as an operational depot on 12th September 1937 not to re-open until 26th May 1990. The intervening years spent as a stores, initially for the LPTB High Tension Mains Department and a convenient landmark for bus destination blinds.
A proposed depot at Uxbridge to house trolleybuses and Greenline coaches was unfortunately never built. Just imagine the chaos in later years, running red and green buses from the same garage !
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Looking west from the scene of the 1901 tramway opening the structure of Southall Broadway is well established by 1960 |
Undated photo of Shepherd's Bush. The infrastructure is unchanged but it takes careful observation to relate to the modern view |
Also in 1960 colour photgraphy has come to Uxbridge and the Routemaster is not far behind |
©Ealing Public Libraries |
©N.Rayfield in aid of LCC Tramways Trust |
©London Transport Museum |