Contrary to what may be thought, the bus on this photograph is an electric
bus, the carriage carries the batteries.
The carriages were switchable amongst the 13 buses of this kind available
to the Rheinbahn in Düsseldorf, Germany (9051 - 9063).
In 1950 the Swiss firm Oerlikon developed the so-called gyrobus. The bus was electric, but electricity was generated en route with a fly-wheel of 1500 kg. Every 5 or 6 km on the route there were posts where the fly-wheel was turned up again. For this purpose three poles were raised to make contact with the three-phase alternating current source. The buses were never really a success. There have been 27 in Yverdon, Switzerland, and 17 in Leopoldsville in Zaïre (currently Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic Congo).
Here we see one of the gyrobuses introduced in Yverdon, Switzerland, in
1953.
Although first construction started in 1950, first delivery was not
until 1953.
In 1956 Oerlikon delivered three gyrobuses for trials to Belgium. This photograph shows one of the three gyrobuses of the Belgian "Chemin de Fer Vicinaux"/"Buurtspoorwegen".
Because of the frequent reloadings, which took a few minutes, they
were not very useful for long routes, and so they were not popular.
They ran in Belium only until 1959.