Exactly a year ago, we got fantastic news from the Tees Valley mayor. Rishi Sunak had given him £1bn in funding from the cancelled HS2 contract, and he had some bright ideas to transform public transport in the Tees Valley. The idea of a monorail had been taken, so the next best thing was a fleet of trackless electric trams in five of our town centres. None of this will ever happen.
There’s nothing new under the sun
Nobody in the real world had heard of Houchen’s brilliant innovation before. Apart, that is, from the people of North Ormesby, South Bank, Grangetown and Eston. They’d had trackless electric trams, more commonly known as trolleybuses, more than a century earlier. From 1919, in fact, through to the system closure in 1971. So what was the Teesside trackless? And why is it almost forgotten?
The North Ormesby, South Bank, Normanby and Grangetown Railless Traction Company
Well that rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? The company was formed in 1912 by an iron and steel firm by the name of Bolckow, Vaughan and Co. They owned the Cleveland Iron and Steel Works in Grangetown. These were, by some measures, the largest steelworks in the world towards the end of the Edwardian era. Most of the Bolckow and Vaughan workers lived in South Bank and Grangetown, and walked or cycled to work. But the company also needed to recruit and retain workers from further afield, and its thoughts turned to a rapid transport system.
A trolleybus? What’s that?
But what would Bolckow and Vaughan’s transport system consist of? A tram system was considered, but tramlines are expensive to build and maintain. So why not build a trolleybus network instead? A trolleybus is an electric bus that draws power from dual overhead wires suspended from roadside posts.Trolleybuses had first been developed in Berlin in 1882. The UK was slow to catch on to the new technology, but some cities began to show interest in the 1910s. Rival Yorkshire cities Leeds and Bradford competed to open the first trolleybus system, and Leeds won by four days, opening on 20 June 1911.
Trolleybuses in Teesside
And so a trolleybus craze began. Within a few years there were 50 trolleybus systems in the UK. And so when the Teesside ironmasters considered their options for a new transport system in 1912, there was only going to be one choice. However, the Teesside system was unfortunate in its timing and, due to wartime shortages, the trolleybuses didn’t start running until 1919. On one of the shortest trolleybus routes ever built. From North Ormesby to South Bank, where the route forked – east to Grangetown and south to Normanby. A map of the area can be seen below, with the bus route highlighted in green:
The Tees-side Railless Traction Board (TRTB)
The year before opening, Bolckow & Vaughan sold the system to the TRTB, jointly owned by Middlesbrough Corporation (North Ormesby is in Middlesbrough) and Eston Urban District Council. The trolleybus lasted for 52 years, providing a fast, efficient, quiet, environmentally friendly service to this small part of Teesside. The system connected to the Middlesbrough tram network in North Ormesby, but Middlesbrough was already planning to phase its trams out, even as the trolleybuses began. Their network began to shrink in 1926 and the last tram ran in 1934.
A sudden end
In 1968, the trolleybus network was extended from Grangetown to Normanby via Eston Square, completing a loop centred on South Bank. This was supposed to open in 1966 but the opening was stalled by United, a local bus company, who feared the competition. But the opening of the extension coincided with the takeover of the Teesside trolleybuses by the newly formed Teesside Municipal Transport (TMT). The TMT saw itself as a modern bus company. They considered the trolleybuses old-fashioned, and immediately began to run the system down. Only three years after the network had been extended, TMT shut the whole thing down on 4 April 1971.
Vandalism
The closure of the Teesside trolleybus system was an unforgivably short-sighted act of vandalism from which the Teesside transport network has never recovered. Only two years later, conflict in Palestine led to the Yom Kippur War, followed by a quadrupling of oil prices. But it was too late to get the electric buses back. They had all been cut up for scrap, apart from three that were saved for transport museums. There are now 500 trolleybus systems throughout the world, but none in the UK. Some film footage of the last days of the bus can be found in this link.
The trolleybus route in January 2025
I decided to walk the trolleybus network on a sunny, but bitterly cold, January day. I started at West Terrace in Doggy, the western terminus of the system. North Ormesby people call their town Doggy, they rarely use its given name, and nobody seems to know why. There are no physical remnants of the overhead lines, at West Terrace, or anywhere else, so you’ve got to imagine how it once looked.
Smeaton Street, the heart of Doggy
The trolleybuses then turned on to Smeaton Street. This once bustling High Street was bulldozed in its entirety by property developers, and the A66 cuts through here now. I was finding it hard to locate the route but then I got lucky, by running into John Colligan. I’d never met John before, but he’s lived in Doggy all of his life, and he kindly took me to a remnant of Smeaton Street right next to the busy dual carriageway. The two photos below, taken 60 years apart, show the same location
The longest day
Then we began to chat about the old days in Doggy. John showed me where everything had been back in the day. The Albion pub, latterly the Green Howards, run by Stanley Hollis. The Silver Grid chippy, Newboulds butchers, and the Cleveland Hotel. Just at the back, Warner’s foundry, and Teesside Bridge and Engineering, part of which remains.
Don’t clock off, though
John Colligan told me how the workies at Teesside Bridge used to cut down by the side of the factory and nip into the Navvy for a pint or two before heading back for the rest of their half lap. There were similar shenanigans over at Cargo Fleet works, where the day gang were notorious for slipping through a hole in the fence and nipping into the Ruin for a couple of liveners. And who can blame them? Steelmaking is thirsty work. Did I mention that the Navvy is the Navigation Inn (still open) and the Ruin was the Crown pub, now buried under the car park of Derek Slack Motors?
John’s big night out
And for a night out? A pint in the Cons, then a taxi to Nelson Street in South Bank. It was jumping on a Friday night, with a pub crawl starting at the Station Hotel, then the Zet and the Globe, finishing in either the Mucky Pots or the Alice. If you know, you know. I left John behind, and followed the remnants of Smeaton Street to the former Lawson School, the last remaining building in Cargo Fleet, seen below:
Cargo Fleet
I’d entered the second steel town of the day, Cargo Fleet, a small terraced grid, built to serve the steelworks of that name. This had begun as an ironworks in 1864, but steel became the main product from 1902 onwards, although the operation was still known as the Cargo Fleet Iron Company. Just like the Cleveland Works a mile over on the other side of South Bank, Cargo Fleet was an integrated plant, with iron ore and coal coming in at one end, and steel girders exiting at the other. Its speciality was Larssen Piling, and the sections from Cargo Fleet can still be found in river jetties all over the world.
The ultimate in green transport
The trolleybus ran past Cargo Fleet works where, in the 1920s, a mile long stretch of road was fitted with cycle lanes on either side. Yes, there were electric buses and cycle lanes along here a century ago. We’ve gone backwards since then with our car obsession.
Cycling lane, Cargo Fleet, photo by Ray Casey
Cargo Fleet Offices
The main works gate could be found to the left of the Cargo Fleet Iron Company offices. These were built in 1916, and are of exceptional quality. The offices remain in busy use. Here’s a photo taken on 2 January 2025, compared with the same location in 1971:
Immediately after the offices, the last surviving building of the Cargo Fleet works can be found. This is the former universal beam mill, now used by SM Thomson Ltd.
The Cargo Fleet depot of the Tees-side Railless Traction Board was next door to the universal beam mill. The depot contained a complex system of overhead wires, known in the trade as ‘knitting’. Buses changed drivers and conductors here. The depot is long gone, having been replaced by an industrial unit. This location can be seen in these ‘then’ and ‘now’ photos below. The first picture was taken on the last day of service, 4 April 1971:
South Bank
Over the bridge and into South Bank, where the trolleybuses diverged at Bennett’s corner. Straight ahead down Middlesbrough Road East towards Grangetown, or right up Normanby Road to its namesake. This sharp 90° bend was a challenge for the trolleybuses, and the trolley poles frequently detached from the knitting, breaking the electric current, and bringing the buses to a halt. Hilarity ensued as the driver tried to re-attach the trolley pole with an extended window pole. Note to trolleybus system designers: Avoid sharp bends. In the photo below, a bus heads through Bennett’s Corner from Grangetown towards North Ormesby on one of the last days of service in 1971. Below this, the same location 54 years later
The Power Station
Continuing along Middlesbrough Road East, past the Cleveland Works that the trolleybus was built to serve. The works’ own power station provided all of the electricity to the system until 1955, which made the buses far cheaper to run than their diesel counterparts. The photo below shows a trolleybus passing the coal blenders for the Cleveland coke ovens. The ovens themselves can be seen in the extreme right of the photo. The power station was behind the blenders. The following photo was taken from the same place in January 2025.
Coal blenders, photo by David Hillas, Creative Commons License
Middlesbrough Road East, photo by Ray Casey
Cleveland coke ovens
The route rounded another sharp 90° bend to the right on to Eston Road, with the Cleveland coke ovens on the left. A trolleybus can be seen at this industrial location now, with a modern day photo of Eston Road below:
Grangetown
The route turned left into Bolckow Road into Grangetown. At first, the system terminated at Market Square, but it was extended to the ‘bullring’ at Kingsley Road in 1951. Two more extensions followed; to Fabian Road in 1964, then that final extension through Eston to link up with the existing terminus at Normanby Top, completed in 1968. There are are some sculptures of trolleybuses on the bullring roundabout, as seen below:
Eston Square
Continuing up Birchington Avenue, the trolleybus route then turned right into the High Street and entered Eston Square. The square only saw three years of trolleybus service, from 1968 to 1971. Here, a bus passes the Talbot pub, which is still there:
The home straight
The trolleybuses reached Normanby Top, where they had to execute another 90° bend, turning right on to Normanby Road and the straight 2-mile run back to South Bank. Many people showed up on the last day of service to capture the trolleybuses for posterity, and Normanby Top was a favourite location for photographers:
Teesville
The landscape around Teesville has changed almost beyond recognition since this photo was taken in 1966, but the bottom entrance to Sycamore Crescent can be seen on the left in both pictures:
Return to South Bank
Back into South Bank, and the trolleybus passed the end of Cromwell Road, where I lived. They were odd looking buses; very quiet, apart from the swish of tyres and the whine of the electric motor as they glided down towards Bennett’s Corner and infinity.
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