Liege (the third major city of Belgium) used to have tram and trolleybus networks. The first trolleybus line started in 1930 and little by little, trams were replaced by trolleybuses. The last tram ran in 1964. You could think that from 1964 trolleybus was the king of the streets. No way, from the beginning of the '60's diesel buses began to replace trolleybuses. At one moment, the trolleybus network was 130 km long. The last two major lines were opened in 1954. In 1971 trolleybuses disappeared completely from our streets. Very soon afterwards the overheads were removed making a comeback impossible. In 1973 the world incountered the first petrol crises!
I wil now show you some of the vehicles which ran in our streets.
The first vehicles were imported from England and were build by Ransomes. This first model was named T30.
Now here are the T32. They were made in Belgium by a company named "FN". Some of you may now this company. This is a company still in production today, they manufacture weapons.
Here is a picture of a T32. 30 were build
Later FN build a new vehicle type T36, 48 vehicles were made. The main difference between T32 and T36 is visible on the roof. On the T32, the two trolley booms were on a single axis.
In 1939, 6 vehicles build by Brossel in Brussel appeared on the network.
Finally in 1954 came the T54. 30 vehicles were build by FN. They were used on the last two opened lines in 1954.
As explained before, in 1971, everything was scrapped. All the vehicles were destroyed except two who are preserved in the transport museum in Liege:
Here below, one T54. This is a static exhibition, the vehicle is missing some internal parts, it cannot be used.
And now again, two pictures of a T32 taken in the museum.
On the following picture, you can see the base of the boom on the single axis
That's it for the Liege Network.
In the suburbs of Liege, there is another city called Seraing. They also had a few trolleybus lines. They used specialy designed trolleybus. These vehicles were bi-directional because, on the line where they were in use, it was not possible to install a returning loop. So the trolley had two driving places and four booms.
First picture: one side of that trolleybus:
and here....the other side:
I hope you enjoyed my explanations.
Kyliedog
