A nasty tingle, yes, but rail posed no risk to passengers
March 10th, 20100 Comments | Derby Evening Telegraph, Mar 9, 2010
I REFER to your recent interesting article by Don Shaw about trolleybuses.
I feel he may have unwittingly misled some readers. It was, indeed, a requirement for a trolleybus to have an insulated grab rail at the entrance but it did not mean that the metal inside it was “live”.
It meant that the authorities were being ultra-careful because any stray current at 500 volts DC would have been lethal.
All the electrics were carefully insulated and fused and I know of no instance of grab rails becoming “live”.
The shock related to in the article was either the shock of touching cold bare metal (try it yourself in the garden on a frosty morning!) or of static electricity on the passenger earthing on to the bus, a nasty tingle but harmless.
Philip Thomas, Glen View, Belper.