Bill and Jim – A London Trolleybus Crew

Description

This hard-back book is about a Wood Green trolleybus depot crew – driver Bill Ryder and conductor Jim Feirghley, who allowed a sixteen-year-old schoolboy into their working environment for eight months in 1961.  It is presented in a unique way in that the animated text is in date order and the photographs, in the main, are in geographical order.  Bill and Jim worked on routes 625, 627, 629 and 641 with each being liberally illustrated from end to end.  Other trolleybus routes and some motorbus routes they encountered also feature.  The change of class from H1 to K1/K2 is demonstrated and the fact that Wood Green was involved in three conversion stages adds to the dialogue and the number of images used – 361 monochromes with eight pages of colour.  Also illustrated are farecharts, badges, traffic circulars and the like.

Bill and Jim saw replacement buses in their working arena as early as the summer of 1959, coming into contact with more in 1960 and 1961 as the trolleybus conversion progressed; there are photos of brand-new replacement buses which have never been seen before.  The last day of stage ten is liberally illustrated as is the final day – Tuesday 7th November 1961.  The compiler encouraged Bill Ryder to join him on the final run – on trolleybus 1353 to Winchmore Hill on route 641; there were just forty-five minutes to go before stage twelve came to a conclusion but an event occurred two minutes after Bill boarded.  He was the only London Transport employee who knew what to do and it was his trolleybusmanship that enabled this conversion to finish as it should; one of the views of the situation, in the compiler’s view, is the photograph of the whole conversion.  All forty-four trolleybuses that operated out of Wood Green depot between stages ten and twelve are shown and, by chance, twenty-one of those forwarded to Isleworth are also seen; most gained another year’s service in West London and there are images of them working there.  This book should appeal to both the transport historian and to others outside of this field.