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By RAY BLOCKUS; Times Leader Staff Writer
Sunday, October 18, 1998 Page: 1B
Buses without engines?
Streetcars without tracks?
Sounds like somebody’s off their trolley.
Not really, though. The truth is, such mechanical contrivances were a
fairly common sight around Public Square and various other locales throughout
the Wyoming Valley from the late 1930s to the fall of 1958.
The vehicles were referred to as “trackless trolleys”- which were actually
buses that ran on electricity supplied via a mechanism connected to overhead
wiring.
Thousands of people rode the trackless trolleys during that era, for one
very good reason: They were available.
But their existence was relatively short-lived, because as “modern” and
“progressive” as they were in those days, the trackless trolley had one huge
shortcoming: If there were no overhead power lines to accommodate it, such
lines would have to be installed at mammoth expense.
Consequently, not long after more and more trackless trolleys replaced the
noisy and slower, Spartan streetcars- which is to say they followed the
streetcars’ already established routes- their disadvantage soon became
apparent. It happened rather swiftly, when the population expanded into new
suburban areas, and when shops of all types began relocating along the main
routes to and from those areas.
The decisive factor: Gasoline- or diesel-powered buses could easily alter
their routes; but trackless trolleys could not.
But many will attest the trolleys were fun while they lasted. Well, perhaps
not fun, but they were quiet, comfortable and efficient. About their only
mechanical weakness was that the trolley occasionally would slip its wire.
When that happened, the driver would have to take hold of the overhead boom
and carefully guide it back onto the overhead wires.
Trackless trolleys were used by the Wilkes-Barre Traction Co. (later the
Wilkes-Barre Transit Co.) until the late 1950s, when the company switched to
an all internal combustion-engined bus fleet.
Trackless trolleys never made up the total bus fleet, however. The heavy,
clanging electric trolley cars were still in use on some runs until about
1950. Various communities, such as Nanticoke and Duryea, never saw the
trackless version in their confines, as was the plan early on.
The bus company used larger units for routes on the main streets, with
smaller ones for neighborhoods with tight turns. Trolley buses were painted
red and tan, while gasoline buses (also in two sizes) were green and tan. The
entire fleet eventually was replaced by conventional buses painted silver with
a green band around the middle.
It was only the Wilkes-Barre Traction Co. that used the trolleys. Martz,
under the name of White Transit Co., ran buses to South Wilkes-Barre and
Plymouth. White’s gasoline buses were painted brown on the bottom and white on
top. The Traction Company used its new, silver gasoline buses until shortly
after the Agnes flood of 1972, when the area’s bus system was transformed into
the public entity of today: the Luzerne County Transportation Authority.
And from where did the electricity that powered the trackless trolleys
come? The Wilkes-Barre Traction Co. produced its own, at a coal-burning plant
on North Washington Street. The company sold for heating purposes the
byproduct- steam- produced by its furnaces.
The trackless trolley routes were abandoned one by one in late 1958. The
final trackless coach, No. 838, made its final West Pittston run on Oct. 17,
1958.
The trolley was returned to the barn and switched off, silencing its
familiar “hummmm.”
At that moment, as was chronicled in the book “Wyoming Valley Trolleys,” by
Harold E. Cox, “The electric transit era in Wilkes-Barre had ended.”
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