A pity, they are still popular in other countries.

They mostly run in Europe these days. Sydney once had a fleet of them running on two routes. There was an oddity with them, the first three that were manufactured were single decker with three axles. The next batch were double deckers with two axles and the remainder double decker with three axles.

Sydney is on the cusp of having electric buses again (running on batteries this time) and quite a few models have been trialled and the first 79 fleet units will be built by a local firm, Custom Denning, which has a long history of building buses in NSW. Eventually, 8,000 will be built to replace the current fleet of diesel and natural gas buses.

One issue I have come across with the electric buses being trialled is that they emit so much electromagnetic interference that they drown out AM radio transmissions in cars that are alongside them. I am hoping that the ones being built by Custom Denning don't suffer from this.

Sydney's old trolley buses went the same way as its original trams - one of the world's greatest displays of government vandalism and something we hope is never witnessed again. The trolleys were removed from service around 1960.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybuses_in_Sydney

If I'm right, they recapture braking energy back to the power supply (600vDC?)(same as trams?)
Today they could use a monopole to get power, dual conductors sandwiched by better insulation now available?
And no need for substations as they could be fed distribution transformer 240v AC in sections separated by small gaps in overhead lines (safer and no need for DC these days!)

In Germany, where they are all nuts about the climate, they are trialling electric trucks that are also fitted with a pantograph to the roof of the prime mover then having a lane set aside for these trucks on a motorway with two catenary cables. The pantograph looks like one you'd see on a tram, nice and tall, but the graphite on top is divided into two sections so each section touches its correct cable.

With the quality of most bus drivers in Sydney, where erratic driving is the norm, this system would not work.

https://www.heavyquipmag.com/2021/03/09/seven-scania-pantograph-equipped-trucks-operates-on-the-first-german-electric-road/

There is talk of rolling out electric road trains here. Given that the largest road trains which tow a B-double combination plus two standard trailers can weigh around 130 tonnes they'd be pushing it to find a set of motors that could haul these loads for 100s of km on such a relatively small battery pack. There would be a standard form-factor battery installed behind the grille in each truck and these would be swapped over at certain intervals along the designated routes by a forklift to keep the truck 'fuelled'.

As transport in Australia's outback rarely stops, these batteries would also have a short life.

On an unrelated note, a bloke fell off the platform at Redfern Railway Station yesterday, apparently dazed for some reason and he can count himself lucky that our railways use pantographs instead of third rails for powering the trains.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHrJBGt07Ec

Recently saw a B-double with triple axle on both semitrailers, plus a triple on the prime mover plus the usual two steering wheels, making a grand total of 38 wheels.
Like this: ooo ooo ooo o

If they change the steering to four wheels, would make forty wheels, and I suppose that is as far as they can go without going to B triple.

The bureaucracy in Australia has got to the point where it seems to be run by a bunch of morons that can only introduce anything that does not, or has been proven not to work, destroys it if it does, or like roads around here provides insufficient money to maintain them. Roads here have corrugation's over 50mm. I did a countback on the computerised records and in todays money since the mid ninety's alone; In todays money in damage, lost tyres and suspension damage is over $11,000.

Nothing could illustrate how out of touch these people are, than during the pandemic expecting livestock to be taken across the Murray River, from Farms within tens of Km from it. Via Sydney of Melbourne. Which at the time were just riddled with the pox and rural Vic & rural NSW had none.

Meanwhile with the stupid, deliberately designed to be, labour intensive & inefficient rail system. They destroy it rather than improve it. A classic example of something like that is the intent to build an ugly big aesthetic ruining bridge over the Melbourne Sydney rail, at Glenrowan Vic.

Glenrowan is essentially on the top of a hill & in the early days it was never unusual for the train to stall before it got there. Being a steep gradient, one would have thought that in fuel efficiency alone, they might have considered what the smarter Germans did in WWII with captured rail and deepened the cutting to reduce the gradient. Obviously too sensible &some ones going to miss out on a lot of money.

India has caught on to America where there is a better road network, but they don't tear it up with weight. Long haul is limited. In India a lot of the semi rigids for long haul are going onto more efficient & less stressful rail and in USA the loaded trailers, like containers are on rail & there are road tractors picking them up at the other end. We could do more of that only the infrastructure has been run into the ground or turned into bike tracks. I am surprised that the Greenies have not introduced a Rickshaw service on it.

I do think at the earlies convenience we get Elon Musk to send the bureaucrats to Mars and we Have the biggest purge in the parliaments possible. The place has gone mad. At least Vic Roads is introducing "artificial intelligence", which may be a vast improvement on what we have.

I look up the new German system, it uses 670v DC, not much different than the old Trolleys.
I once took a ride on old Bris system that only went as far east as Seven Hills, very quiet, good starting torque!

I wonder why they chose such a weird voltage. Yes, Sydney's trolleys used 600V to mimic the trams. The trams we have now run on 750V which makes sense as they are a lot bigger and heavier.

Funny that this topic should come up as last week I was thinking back to what I could remember about living in Sydney as a child in the 1950s. I thought I had seen trolleybuses as well as trams but was not sure if I had been confused as there were also trolleybuses in Perth when I lived there in 1960.

I agree with Brad's observations except the demise of the tram in Sydney was one of the NMRA's greatest "achievements". The Association strongly lobbied the State Government of the day because they claimed that "slow" trams clogged the roads and the requirement to wait behind a tram every time it reached a stop restricted the free movement of cars in the Sydney CBD. Oddly the RACV in Melbourne never complained about trams there in the same way.

However if anyone wants to see a modern but totally inefficient "Light Rail vehicle" (i.e a tram) that cost $1 billion to build but goes nowhere then come to Canberra. Sorry Marcc but this was not a decision of "the bureaucracy in Australia" but a totally ideological driven demand by the local Greens who held the balance of power in the Assembly. The fact that majority of tax-payers didn't want it and could see that it would be a 'White Elephant' was of no importance.

Interesting comments, generating grand memories of being a primary school kid in Melbourne, circa 60's. Wonderful era. Crossing Bourke Rd. with mum holding my hand tightly watching a car (yes, one car) pass by as we hopped of the tram. We made it to the other side of the road and walked across a railway bridge when another car drove past.

I'm serious. A car per minute, or so it seemed. Trams ruled the roads. Cop cars were light blue Anglias (spell check not happy) The serious cop cars were V8 Studibakers. (Another spell check hissy)

I remember a green 'shed' in the middle of the footpath with no windows, heavy grill door and always humming loudly. I found out later it housed a rotary converter for tram power. When I returned to Melbourne in 1982 the green shed was still there and still humming away nicely.

Regarding 'Greenies', they may soon face extinction as more Independents funded by rich non achievers try to steal the limelight.

Turns out the excellent Bris trolleys were made by Sunbeam, a brand we more associate with iconic sports cars!

If it was not for greenies the fires of 2019, there destruction of the flora & fauna, and incalculable extinctions, would never have happened to anything like the same extent. Apparently we are back to the 18th century European mentality & arrogance where Farmers & Aboriginals mainly, know nothing about land management, or anything, as they didn't get an education in the great halls of Europe.

Since Greenification & Management since 1978 here, the once pristine Warby Ranges and State Parks are full of disease, St John's Wart, Patterson's Curse and others. More than a Third of the trees have gone & it looks like a wasteland. We then have as well as weeds out of control; A perfect breeding ground, for apparently indigenous creatures like Deer, Pigs, Foxes and Feral Cats.

The roads next to me, have that much down timber like the forest, that if you tried to use them in a fire you would be incinerated. And ringing for help on a Mobile phone, futility as its unlikely to have any signal.

And you wonder why we are sceptical. The loonies are running the asylum.

The term "light rail vehicle" was dreamed up by some fool to hide the political elements of reintroducing trams to Sydney back in 1997. Ironically, the first of these trams were built in Melbourne - at the time considered one of the only places a large tram network could still be found.

Since then, all publicly accessible references to "light rail vehicles" have been removed and painted over with the word "tram" which is ultimately what they are. A light rail line or network merely refers to a tram system that includes level platforms to provide access for people in wheelchairs though back at the time this feature was being rolled out it was marketed as a new idea of the future, not something that started in this country here in Sydney back in 1861.

If anyone wants to ride on a classic R-class tram, you can - at the Sydney Tramway Museum at Loftus. Just over 600 of these were built which almost outnumbers all of the trams in service in Australia today.

Saw this in Melbourne.in April 1986. Problem is that you can't change the route once you install the tracks and overhead. Not like a diesel powered bus. But the pollution is remotely produced at the power company power plant, not by a tailpipe on the bus.

It's nice they still use the same tram seen by Wa2ise around the Melbourne city circle.
Although I heard they were once a little different with the seating arrangement; with a long bench running along either side which resulted in people sliding into one another when the tram would start and stop.