This article is from page 37 of the 2009-07-07 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 37 JPG
AS TRAMS and other alterna- tive transport vehicles make a huge comeback all over the world one north Clare man has a unique claim to fame; he was the last electric trol- ley driver in England.
Originally from Carron, Patrick Fitzgerald spent almost five decades in Nottingham, where he worked in construction before becoming an electric bus driver.
“T went over to England in 1959, when I was 16 years of age. There’s talk about recession now but let me tell you there was a recession back then,” he said.
“T went into roofing first and af- ter I had an accident on the roofs I changed to the buses. I was too young then to drive so I started as a conductor and then became a driver when I turned 21.
“At the time there was 54 miles of electric lines for the buses all around Nottingham; most big cities had them over there at that stage. It’s funny now, they are all going back to trams and things like that. They would be much happier to have the old tram networks and the lines for the electric trolleys now.”
In the name of progress, the elec- tric trolley fleet began to be wound down. On it went until the mid-1960s when Patrick found himself driving the last route still in service.
“IT used to drive the night-time bus from Trent Bridge. I was sad to see it go, I liked it. It was great in a straight road going around 30 miles an hour. You’d have to be careful go- ing around the corners though,’ he
continued.
“It would have been the main source of transport at the time; eve- ryone would have used them. I was on the electric trolleys for five and a half years altogether; from °52 to ‘57,
between conducting and driving. “There were lovely to drive. They had only two pedals; the right pedal was our foot breaks and left pedal was the power. If you put on too much power at any time the bus
would blow it’s fuses out altogether.
“Tt was the last route and I was the last driver on the night shift, so I saw the end of them.”