These images come from a trip I made to Riga, which is the capital city of Latvia.
Since its liberation from the Germans in WW2 Latvia was (an unwilling) part of the Soviet Union. I visited Riga in April 1998, which was just a few years after Latvia had become free again, but before it had replaced / modernised all its transports.
At one time this style of multiple-unit trolleybus operation was practised in many cities in what used to be known as the Soviet Union. In Riga they used triple door Skoda 9TrH trolleybuses, whilst some of the other cities used the twin door variants. Riga's vehicles had fleet numbers within the 2-800 - 2-900 range, with the first number (2) showing the number of which bus garage to which they had been allocated.
For multiple-unit operation the front vehicle did not use its trolleypoles and was both physically and electrically connected to the rear vehicle. The coupling between them worked by means of a drawbar which was connected to the steering arm of the rear bus - so that it just followed the driving one. Effectively therefore the principle is very similar to a road vehicle pulling a trailer - except that here both vehicles were powered. Once coupled the twin-set combinations would normally remain coupled (unless the workshops disconnected them). So the rear vehicle would not normally drive 'solo'. For safety pedestrians were prevented from walking between the two vehicles by means of flexible 'gates' - as seen in some of the images, below.
Riga no longer uses multiple-unit trolleybuses as they now prefer articulated trolleybuses. As far as the former Soviet Union is concerned, only two cities in The Ukraine are known to still be using multiple-unit trolleybuses.
A short video clip of multiple-unit trolleybuses is also available. This comprises of
three different sets of images, all hand held, and all of the 'snapshot' variety, as I was not sure whether I should have been filming at all. At one time I had been stopped from filming the trams, so I had to be very careful. To see the film clip click either the projector
icon or this link to download a 63 second video clip named 'Riga-tbus320.mpg'.
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