It was not until 1949 that trolleys made a return to the city when ten Crossley buses were purchased to replace the trams on the Roseneath route. In fact much of the reason for expanding the trolley fleet over the next fifteen years was to replace the ageing tram fleet. The report of the General Manager of the Corporation Tramways, dated 1 February 1945, recommeded to phase out trams in favour of trolley buses. On 14 February 1945 the city council "approved of the substitution of the trolley buses for motor buses and trams on certain routes". Two factors worked in the favour of trolleys. Firstly, Wellington is a hilly city and in the early days at least, petrol and diesel motors could not compete with electric motors on the steep hills. Secondly, post war fuel rationing was still in place.
The next batches of vehicles introduced in 1951, 1958 and 1964 were all from British United Traction - a marketing front for Leyland and AEC (Associated Equipment Company). In fact the vast majority of all trolleys to operate in New Zealand were supplied by this company.
By the seventies the trams were long gone and the current fleet of trolley buses was becoming due for retirement as well. They had long gone from Christchurch and New Plymouth, and were slowly being withdrawn from Auckland and Dunedin. Most importantly they had also fallen from favour in Britain - the traditional source of New Zealand's buses. Wellington still had a large fleet of trolleys since the citie's diesel fleet had a higher priority for replacement during the earlier part of the decade. However spare parts were difficult to obtain and this had resulted in the council making many of the parts itself at the Kilbirnie workshop. Yet by the late 1970's there had been a marked political swing back in favour of trolley buses due to enviromental issues and the impact of recent oil price rises. As a result of this the Wellington City Council decided to renew it's system and purchase a fleet of new vehicles. About the same time Auckland decided to scrap it's own new system so twenty extra buses were obtained at a very good price. The overhead was also renewed with Kummler and Matter wires replacing the older Ohio Brass system in the main part of the city. Ohio Brass is still used in the suburbs.
In the 1990's government legislation was introduced to prevent local authorities from operating transport services. This resulted in the council's services being run by the semi-autonomous Wellington City Transport company until that was eventually sold to Stagecoach - a international company based in Scotland.
A few facts and figures. Like all New Zealand systems, Wellington's operated on a 550 - 600 volts DC supply with return to earth (in Dunedin the return was isolated from earth). The largest the fleet has ever been is 119 vehicles with a total of 208 to ever see service. At it's peak there was 50km of overhead installed.
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