Financial difficulties in 1911 resulted in RET Construction Co Ltd being formed, to take over the business, goodwill and patents of Railless Electric Traction.
Three main methods of current collection were tried, but the Schiemann system, consisting of twin trolley booms running along the underside of two wires, and held there by springs, gained the ascendency.
Against this background, the Railless Electric Traction Company was formed in 1908, and it had the benefit of owning the UK licence for the Schiemann current collection method.
Metropolitan Electric Tramways were keen to try out the system in London, and in 1909 constructed a roadway with twin overhead wires.
[5] Railless provided a 24-seat single deck vehicle, with bodywork by Milnes Voss of Birkenhead, based on a chassis constructed by James and Browne in London.
It was powered by two 25 hp (19 kW) electric motors, manufactured by British Thomson-Houston, each one driving one of the back wheels through a chain mechanism.
Although Metropolitan Electric Tramways were keen to introduce a public service, they never obtained formal powers to do so, and the demonstration track was dismantled in 1911.
The Leeds system ran alongside the trams from the city centre, and then diverged into the countryside to reach its destination.
These were fitted with two 20 hp (15 kW) motors by Siemens, again one for each back wheel, with a complex chain drive to link them together, and bodywork by Hurst Nelson of Motherwell.
Charles H. Roe was the Chief Draughtsman, and following the demise of Milnes Voss in late 1913, designed bodies with metal frames and aluminium panels.
From October 1913, traction equipment was obtained from Dick, Kerr & Co of Preston, and in 1914, the cumbersome chain drives were redesigned with a single reduction gear.
[2] During this period, RET supplied two trolleybuses to Dundee, six to Rotherham, four to Ramsbottom, one to Mar del Plata in Buenos Aires, six to Boksburg, South Africa, and six to Shanghai, China.
The North Ormesby, South Bank, Normanby & Grangetown Railless Traction Co also placed an order for ten vehicles in 1915, four of which were nearly complete by the time the company went into receivership in 1916.
Because of the narrow streets and tight corners that the trolleybuses had to negotiate, they were only 6 feet 3 inches (1.91 m) wide, and were designed for one-man operation.
Railless also received a rather unusual order from Shanghai in 1922, for two chassis which were fitted with conventional trolleybus equipment together with a petrol engine and generator, allowing the vehicles to work where there was no overhead wiring.
[11] In June 1923, Chief Engineer Edward Munro left, to devote more time to his consulting business, and there were no new orders on the books.