Created 6-Aug-22
Modified 8-Mar-24
These tours all had to be booked in advance and ran on the Saturday and Sunday. They gave all those wanting to travel round the system one last opportunity and also, by providing them they avoided the need to deal with would probably have become an unmanageable number of requests for private tours.
The tours followed a standard route, which covered the majority of the remaining route length with some more unusual wiring as well. The route was:
Thornton Road (Odeon)
Thornton
Four Lane Ends
Squire Lane
Duckworth Lane
City
Thornbury
City
Thornton Road (Odeon)
There were six tours in total and as a general rule the route number displayed was the tour number, although this didn't always apply. Each trolleybus also displayed a letter in the windscreen to indicate the vehicle on that tour (with vehicle A always going last). The exceptions seem to have been 735 on Tour 6 which acted as a duplicate and didn't carry a letter, along with 845 on Tour 6 (which was vehicle A but didn't display it). Notably this was the last trolleybus on which it was possible for the public to ride.
The vehicle allocations are shown below and can help to understand the working involved in each picture.
Saturday 25th March 1972:
Tour 1 (0930): A - 712
Tour 2 (1130): A - 706
Tour 3 (1430): A - 712, B - 706
Tour 4 (1630): A - 843
Sunday 26th March 1972:
Tour 5 (0930): A - 845, B - 706
Tour 6 (1130): A - 845, B - 706, C - 712, D - 843, E - 713, F - 711, G - 703 (duplicate for D, E, F and G - 735)
The trolleybuses left Duckworth Lane on Saturday and returned to Thornbury works on Saturday night. All operated from, and returned to, Thornbury works on the Sunday.
© David Beilby
