Mention Dayton Ohio and most folks will immediately think of the Wright Brothers and the birthplace of aviation. That’s certainly true; the city takes great pride in its aviation legacy. But Dayton is also rich in manufacturing and transportation history. Dr Charles F. Kettering called Dayton home, working first at National Cash Register (NCR) and later founding the Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company (Delco). Dayton was a “GM town”, with not only Delco but the Moraine Assembly Plant that cranked out thousands of vehicles, most recently the GMC Envoy and Chevrolet Trailblazer, before closing in 2008. But what I enjoy and admire most about the city is its commitment to a unique form of public transportation mostly written off by other metropolitan areas – the trackless trolley or trolley bus. Here’s a short history…
Like many other cities in the decade of the 1930’s, Dayton was looking to replace its urban streetcars – it received an extra push when a large fire broke out in one of the city’s maintenance barns, destroying a good percentage of the streetcar fleet. Rather than replace these with gas or diesel engined buses, it decided to keep its overhead catenary infrastructure and ordered twelve trolley coaches from the JG Brill company in 1933.
Brill T30
Brill, at the time the largest US manufacturer of streetcars and interurbans, introduced a trolley bus in 1931; the T30 (30 pax) and T40 (40 pax). Dayton’s order was composed of both models.
Pullman-Standard ETB
Marmon-Herrington TC48
More Brills were ordered and they served well up to and during the busy war years, but with the postwar expansion of the city, Dayton looked to broaden its fleet. They did so with orders from the Pullman Company for their Pullman-Standard ETB coach, and from Marmon-Herrington (MH), for their TC44 and TC48 models. The Pullman seated 40 passengers, the MH’s 44 and 48 respectively.
Ex-Little Rock Brill
In the 1950’s and early 60’s, many cities were converting their trolley bus lines to diesel, and Dayton was able to purchase some well-cared for second-hand units. Between 1956 and 1965, they acquired 21 Brills from Little Rock and Indianapolis; and 75 Marmon-Herringtons from Little Rock, Cincinnati, Columbus, and Kansas City.
A tradition was started in 1965 when a MH TC48 was repainted in bright red and christened the “Winter Trolley” and used on downtown routes in December. A large chair was installed in the back and volunteer RTA employees took turns portraying Santa – it was a big hit with the kids. Its success spawned other seasonal buses for Spring, Summer and Fall.
The Brills and Pullmans were retired in the 1960s and early 70’s and by mid-decade, the fleet was mostly Marmon-Herrington, all of which were more than 20 years old. Looking at replacement options, Dayton settled on the Canadian Flyer E800 coach, very similar to the AM General diesel bus then being sold (AM General had a joint venture with Flyer). Sixty-four were purchased and delivered in 1977, and were Dayton’s first trolleys with air conditioning.
The Fleet remained all Flyer until 1996 when Dayton purchased two second-hand GM “New Look” trolleys that had been in service with Edmonton Transit.
The latter part of the 1990’s again necessitated fleet-wide replacement with the Flyers then 20 years old. Few of the existing bus manufacturers were willing to convert their production lines for such a small trolley bus order, however, a small start-up company named Electric Transit Inc. offered a version of the Czech Skoda 14Tr trolley bus then in use in Europe. These buses were somewhat unique in that they were 37 feet long, rather than the standard 40 feet, and had their rear door aft of the rear axle.
Dayton ordered fifty-seven in 1994, which were delivered in 1996-98, but unfortunately the 14Tr’s were plagued with problems; electrical gremlins, cracked frames, and persistent rust. Fixing all this was exacerbated when ETI went out of business in 2004 – kudos to the RTA mechanics who kept them running. Dayton decided to look for replacements after just 15 years of service.
The RTA decided to go with a more experienced manufacturer for their next trolley and purchased four Kiepe Electric (formerly Vossloh Kiepe) 40 foot Nex Gen trolley buses for testing and evaluation. Kiepe is a German electronics company with a long history in transportation. Their Nex Gen bus is a Gillig Low Floor BRT coach fitted with Keipe traction motors and controls. Two of these models also had a diesel-electric hybrid power train for off-wire operation, while the other two had lithium-oxide batteries. Both models have a 15-20 mile range when off-wire.
Dayton tested these models for a full 3 years in hopes of identifying any problems – none were noted and in October 2017, an order was placed for 26 lithium battery models with plans for 15 more. Delivery is scheduled to start in early 2019.
For those looking to view some of Dayton’s trolley bus history in-person, a restored MH TC48 (No. 515) is on display at Carillion Park in Dayton – a beautiful location chock full of unique historical displays. If you’re in the area, I’d recommend a stop by.
Currently there are only six metropolitan areas in North America that still operate trackless trolleys (Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, and Dayton). It will be interesting to see if this number decreases as pure battery-electric powered buses, with advances in range and faster recharging, gain prominence in urban transit fleets.
Trackless trolleys always struck me as an excellent idea: Getting rid of the rails meant that expanding a route only meant stringing overhead wires, while doing away with pollution and fueling concerns. Johnstown, PA converted over to them during my early childhood, only to drop them about twenty years later in favor of regular busses.
Guess pollution wasn’t a concern back in the 70’s, fuel was still relatively cheap, and I’ll assume that regular buses were cheaper on a per unit basis. I do remember the local paper championing the move, among other thing pushing the removal of the “unsightly overhead wires”.
Great article. In the early 1960s, my grandmother lived on a Dayton avenue with the electric bus line. As a small child, I’d sit on the porch fascinated as the buses went by. If memory serves right, most that I saw were the MH buses. The twin “antennas” were cool and they would visibly spark with a popping sound at wire crossings. We rode on the buses a few times too.
I have often wondered how a trackless trolley driver knew what the limits were on the trolley poles and not to exceed the poles limits. Yes tonyola I do remember them as a small child in Indianapolis and the sparking as they went through wire crossings and junctions. Were the trolleys powered by 600 Volts DC?
That was my first thought, these drivers have to really know their driving lines. I assume the poles are attached to the overhead wires in such a way that’s designed to detach fairly easily if they went too far, rather that rip the wires down or damaged the poles.
Which then makes me wonder, do the pure electric early ones have any sort of range at all if they come detached? Like if in a snow storm a driver goes off the side of the road a couple feet, do they require a tow to get back over to the lines?
The trolley poles are not connected “rigidly” to the wire; the end of the pole has a carbon “shoe”, which has a deep groove, and the pole exerts upward tension on the wire from springs. If the bus goes too far outside the poles’ range, the poles will come off the wires.
Poles would come off the wires at other times from time to time. The driver would get out and go to the back of the bus and use ropes to pull down the pole and then reconnect it to the wire.
Traditional trolley buses cannot move if the pole comes off the wire. Usually the pole can be reconnected, but if a driver goes too far off the range of the poles, yes, a tow is required.
Increasingly many of the new trolley buses also have batteries to allow them to drive some distance without the wires, which is of course very handy both for route extensions/changes, construction zones, or in the case of a dropped pole.
Common occurrence putting the pole back on the wire on the streets of San Francisco.
Still see an occasional pole pop off a wire in Seattle and the driver jump out and pull on the rope to pop it back on.
That’s very common during winter mornings, while the wires are covered in a thick layer of ice and the poles tend to pop off all the time when they meet a major icicle if the driver is not careful. That is accompanied by a lot of sparks, too – almost like arc-welding. After the first two or three trolley-buses pass, it gets better though.
Boston has a line (Silver I think) that runs on diesel from Logan airport. When it hits the city, the line runs in underground tunnels and switches over to electric for that portion of the journey. As the driver approaches the tunnel, he has to stop, shut off the diesel and position the bus electric poles on the wires. It takes longer to write about it than to do it.
I’ve seen that many times, by the way. If the poles accidentally disconnect from the wires, the driver gets out, pulls a rope fastened to the pole, and manually reconnects it to the corresponding wire.
That’s with the old pole-type connectors, similar to those shown in this article. Modern trolley-buses sometimes have automatic pantograph-type connectors (which of course limit the vehicle’s freedom of movement more than the poles – or even can be used at full-stop only, the so called “semi-pantographs”), and, indeed, batteries witch enable them to operate independent from the wires for some time.
When the pole comes off the wire, it’s called a dewirement.
I worked in the Maintenance Dept in Vancouver, BC and was trained to drive on CCF Brill trolley coaches. It wasn’t too much of a problem knowing how far you could go without the poles coming off. It was more of knowing where you were going and what was coming up in the way of switches for making left and right turns. Left turns usually had a “power” switch where you slow right down almost to a crawl and then slowly give the bus a bit of power and the poles switch over to the other wire. If you coast through that type of switch the poles won’t go to the turn wire but stay on the through wire. These switches could sometimes be 2 blocks ahead of your left turn so you had to know all this and think before you get there. The trolley rope was wound around a “retriever” on the rear body which is supposed to lock and prevent the lost pole from damaging the trolley overhead or the bus itself…didn’t always work that way unfortunately. Rewiring a lost pole in poor weather in heavy traffic is bloody scary sometimes.
In Philly at least, the sideways range is enough to allow the bus to pull over to the curb, so there are not too many opportunities, outside of something at an intersection, to go too far to the right. On the left, there is enough to go around a double parked car. Being able to pull over to the curb, and to go around a stopped vehicle, are of course the advantages of the trackless trolley that keep it from blocking or being blocked by car traffic.
Another fine Saturday-Jim Brophy-bus read.
I’m familiar with this type of buses, as the nearby city of Arnhem (“A Bridge Too Far”) has been using trolley buses for public transport for a very long time. Here’s a video, featuring a 1949 and 1990 trolley bus:
Thanks for the video Johannes, I enjoyed seeing all those trolleys.
Nice photo and content research Jim. As a kid from the 70s, when you say Dayton, I say ‘Ohio Players’.
And that scream that you hear during the original studio version of the song is not a woman about to be murdered–that’s an urban legend.
Another fun read. Until today I had never known of even given any thought to the origins of Delco.
Here in Houston they sometimes decorate the busses and light rail cars with sports stuff. Lots of that after the World Series.
I’ve been a fan of trolley buses since growing up with them in Innsbruck:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/bus-stop-classic/bus-stop-classics-the-vintage-electric-trolleybuses-of-chile-and-innsbruck/
There’s no question that the battery electric bus has come of age, and will fairly quickly replace both diesel buses and trolley buses, as they are now cheaper to run (over their lifespan) than a diesel bus, despite the significantly higher upfront cost. I assume the same applies to the trolley buses, as the maintenance of the overhead wires must not exactly be insignificant, although I do not have any hard numbers on that. It may be that trolley buses on existing routes stay around for a while.
Kudos to Dayton for hanging in there with their trolley buses. They must have saved a lot of maintenance costs from the lack of the diesel engines and transmission. Obviously, there was the cost of maintaining the wires, but it would be interesting to know how Dayton’s costs over the decades compared to a diesel system.
As mentioned in the article we still have trolley buses in Seattle operated by Metro. Interestingly they have relatively recently added a 2nd conventional tracked trolley line. Additionally they have some battery electrics and hybrids for other areas. I don’t know if they have anything that directly compares the cost of operation of the different buses. I do know they had something that compared the projected costs of the battery electrics when they ordered those.
You just reminded me that Salzburg also has the trolley buses — I remember riding them on a family vacation to Germany and Austria a little over a decade ago. To get from the train station to the little bed and breakfast that my dad booked us in way out on outskirts of town we had to ride the trolley bus and then transfer to a diesel one to take us out there. I was impressed by how comprehensive European public transit networks are; in an American city I’m not sure if it would even be possible to get someplace like that on public transit.
Vancouver BC replaced its Brill trolleys with New Flyers at some point years ago. Strangely, a number of them ended up in the ‘ghost town’ of Sandon in the West Kootenays, an odd sight only those driving to a local trailhead will likely ever see.
https://globalnews.ca/news/1412027/ghost-town-mysteries-the-old-trolley-buses-of-sandon-b-c/
Very interesting. Bus stop classics is one of my favourite series here at cc. Most surprising for me is the use of czech buses in the US, especially at this time.
The urban transit system in my hometown is also testing pure battery powered buses. the pic shows one of them at the recharging stations, which were placed at some bus stops. The buses were made by Solaris in Poland, a manufacturer whose very common in europe now. There are also many conventional busses from this marque here.
San Francisco also uses electric trolley buses in their core downtown area, and diesels for more outlying routes, as does Seattle as previously mentioned. I actually had no idea the idea of trolley buses was such an old one; I’d kind of assumed those two aforementioned cities chose to use electric powered buses as a form of “green” mass transit rather than spewing diesel fumes around their downtowns.
I enjoyed the article and the photos from metro Dayton way back when. I like those midwestern cities with rivers and manufacturing and the way they used to be. Don’t want to be there now but what great places to grow up!
The cities I’ve lived in never had catenary bus systems; I knew nothing about them until I was in Brno, Czech Republic. I couldn’t stop looking at them. And yes, just outside our Brno hotel, one of them had a pole become detached. After a night of too much pork and beer and not able to sleep I watched out the window and the driver did his thing with the pole, reconnected the bus and went on his way. Probably was one of those Czech busses Dayton bought.
Oohhh. So much makes sense now. I’d seen the catenary by a facility I care for on the north side of Dayton, but thought it was just a relic. I had no idea they were still active
Thanks for a great story! Maybe in the future you could expand our knowledge on more trolley buses.
The town where I grew up had trolley buses, so I was fascinated by them. Our town had ZIU trolley buses exclusively with later addition of Kharkov made units.
I’ve seen New Flyer in Vancouver but had no chance to ride it.
I’ve always been fascinated by trolley buses, partly because I’ve had very limited exposure to them.
They used to operate in Sydney where I live (refer to the photo below, and yes we had single decker ones too ?) but they (and the trams) stopped operating well before I was born. At least the trams are making a comeback here now, which is great.
Those with a macabre sense of humour will be interested to know that the Sydney trolley buses were nicknamed “whispering death” as the electric motors and pneumatic types meant they had a habit of creeping up on unsuspecting pedestrians, unlike the diesel bus and trams.
My own real experience with trolleybuses is in Athens, where I’ve been on extended holidays on more than one occasion. The trolleys were all yellow and I believe were Russian or European in origin.
Unfortunately only one Sydney double decker trolleybus exists, and is in a Sydney Tram museum. I’ve seen it up close and it appeared slight larger than the diesel double deckers that I grew up with. At least one single decker is on another Sydney museum.
On a related topic, Russia/USSR operated trolley trucks for some time.
Great piece. What a coincidence. I’ve had no actual exposure to trolley-busses either, but just yesterday I started researching them after I read that my hometown–Portland Oregon–is thinking of building yet another expensive light rail line. The tab for the new line would be $2.8 Billion plus the loss of two lanes of most of a major arterial highway (supposedly to “reduce congestion?”). Our bigger neighbor to the North–Seattle–has used trolley-buses for years .
The new ones in Seattle have batteries so they can run off-line and then back on-line.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8W0AcsCJ4ac
Here’s a link to 1940 film promoting trolley-buses over streetcars in Seattle.
That’s a great video – thanks. Jim.
Great video. And really nice Divco on the still.
Since being moved to Cincinnati back in 1992, I have always been impressed by Dayton continuing to use trolley buses. While I prefer steel wheels on rails, I look at a trolley bus as an “upgrade” from regular buses.
I’m happy the Dayton continues to use them.
As someone who has spent a lot of time in Dayton, I can’t imagine why they keep using these. The city has shrunk enormously and seems mostly empty and abandoned these days which I would think would have the effect of making a lot of routes unprofitable and unused and it’s not like this kind of infrastructure lends itself to adjustments as needs change.
But to me the biggest drawback is that the suspended wires are unsightly (to be kind) and in an era where more and more older midwestern cities are removing overhead wiring in order to remove the “visual pollution” its presence is particularly jarring. There’s nothing charming about it and when you look around at the crumbling roads, abandoned structures, and general poor condition of the city itself it’s tough to see why they continue to invest in it when conventional buses would surely be a cheaper option.
There is a website devoted to Dayton Trolley buses through the years with lots of pictures.
http://www.daytontrolleys.net/
As a native Daytonian, I rode the trolleys a lot as a kid – the #5, from Oakwood in the south to Dayton View in the north. There was one long hill as the bus traveled towards downtown. One driver, “E. Stout,” (I remember his nameplate) would scream down that mile-long hill probably hitting 60 as he neared the bottom. It was always a small thrill. The buses were clean, quiet, spacious and a real joy to ride on – better than the GM Diesels that handled other routes. Yes, the wires are not especially attractive, but I’d take the electrics any day. And Daytonians of today agree: twice they’ve voted on whether to keep the trolleys and in both cases, the trolleys won. Also, the comment about Carillon Park is valid. If you’re interested in the Industrial Age, Carillon covers it with a particularly Dayton viewpoint: exhibits on the cash register, the airplane, the self-starter, all of which originated Dayton, as well as other local industries that were national leaders. It’s worth a few hours – and they have a brewpub on site!
Thanks for the great article. I’ve been a fan of trolley buses for a long time and remember well riding in the old Brill trolleys on route 1 in Edmonton.
I think over time Trolley buses will disappear as more and more cities convert to electric buses. St. Albert, Alberta, Edmonton and now Calgary are going that way. Year round testing here in St. Albert has shown they are reliable and can handle winter conditions.
The rationale for why trolley buses exist today in Dayton is explained here:
http://www.daytontrolleys.net/history/plansreports/2010_cba/2010_rta_cba_01.htm
If you don’t want to read the full report, jump to the summary:
http://www.daytontrolleys.net/history/plansreports/2010_cba/2010_rta_cba_15.htm
It is a “green” argument, but not the green you might think of for electric vehicles. While FTA 5337 funds are available, trolleys will run in Dayton. Or somebody needs to find $12M/year to send to the GDRTA.
The Brill (458) pictured above is from Columbus OH, and is a Brill 44SMT, not a T-30.
Here’s an example of a Dayton Street Transit Brill T-30.
http://www.trolleybuses.net/day/htm/usa_h_day_brill_dst145_locationdateunknown_courtesymakessafety_hh.htm
While the purchase of the 12 1933 Brills by Dayton Street Railway (later Dayton Street Transit) Company was a direct result of their August 24 1932 carbarn fire, the need to update/refresh the overall street railway physical plant combined with a desire to do away with rail transit as then considered old fashioned also caused the Oakwood Street Railway, People’s Railway, City Railway and Dayton-Xenia Railway to choose to convert their rail operations to trolley buses at various times over the period from 1936-1947.
And thanks for the daytontrolleys plug, smbroyles
More photos here, too:
http://www.trolleybuses.net/day/day.htm
That is an interesting read. It surprised me to learn that the maintenance costs on the electric trolleys is that high, for I had assumed that the relative simplicity of the drivetrain would make them less expensive to maintain. I wonder how much the maintenance costs are driven by the problematic Skodas, and whether this would be more favorable with a fleet of more reliable trolleys.
I have not read a detailed analysis like this for electric vs. internal combustion automobiles, but expect that long-term maintenance costs for an electric car would be less than those for internal combustion vehicles. Trolleys are quite different from automobiles, obviously, but this still surprised me.
It will be interesting to see what happens as electric buses make further inroads into urban transportation, for they seem to offer the best of all worlds, with the versatility inherent in not needing the catenary system, and the lack of direct exhaust emissions and noise that come with diesel buses. Relative environmental impact is always difficult to quantify, for the air pollution created by electric vehicles depends greatly on the mix of sources in the grid when they are being charged. If their maintenance costs are lower than those of diesel buses it would seem to make them an ideal solution.
This may not matter for cities that receive the federal funding that keeps Dayton’s electric trolleys rolling (as long as that source continues), but may play an important part in the future of mass transit elsewhere.
I’m a little ashamed to be a native Ohioan and not know the trolleys had this long history in Dayton. A very informative article (thank you, Jim Brophy!), with bonus useful info in the comments. Not sure how I missed this one in 2018.
Lots of historical innovation and industry in Ohio, long used as a bellwether test-market city for its urban/rural, north/south, and political balance; still the 7th most populous state.
Interested CC-ers driving by on I-70 might enjoy the USAF’s national museum at Wright-Patterson: https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil
Thanks for such an awesome history of these unique trolleys! Great story!