Longwood trolleybus turntable

The Longwood trolleybus turntable formed part of the Huddersfield trolleybus system, which served the market town of Huddersfield, in West Yorkshire, England.

History

Opened on, the turntable was used to turn around all Huddersfield trolleybuses terminating at Dod-Lea, where there was insufficient space for the trolleybuses to reverse their direction under their own power.
Manually operated, the turntable remained in use only until 1940. By that time, wartime conditions had led to the recruitment of female conductors who were not strong enough to help the driver operate the turntable, and blackout regulations had made it difficult for crew to see what they were doing after dark. The turntable was therefore replaced by alternative arrangements, and was not put back into service after the end of the war. However, it remained in situ for many years, until finally being removed in the second half of the 1980s.

Significance

The Longwood turntable is said to be one of only four trolleybus turntables ever to have been constructed worldwide. Two other such turntables are the similarly abandoned Christchurch trolleybus turntable, in Bournemouth, England, and the Unterburg trolleybus turntable in Solingen, Germany. A fourth known trolleybus turntable was one used on the Guadalajara trolleybus system in Mexico in the 1980s, in a since-closed trolleybus-only tunnel in the city centre, on a temporary basis in 1982–1983 and again from 1985 until early 1988.