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Tramwaytag 2005 + miscellaneous from Vienna
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Tramwaytag - "Tramway day" - is mainly an "open day" in one of the facilities of urban transit operator Wiener Linien, with programmes for the whole family, and not just tram lovers. This year's Tram Day - which was the 21st - was held on 11.06.2005 in the Brigittenau remise. Apart from the central events taking place there, anyone could use any urban transportation means between 9AM and 7PM with a special ticket issued by Wiener Linien for free, so this day was really about public transportation means and the city of Vienna!
Since I've already had the luck to see some of the remises and special/heritage tramcars of Vienna (for example here, here, here and here), my main interest was aimed at the shuttle services this day. These were circling around (with the two end of the route being Schwedenplatz and Floridsdorf S U) in the town taking visitors to the site of the festivities. One of the heritage tram sets doing the shuttle was this M1+m3 train, depicted at Schwedenplatz.
Remise Brigittenau with route 31, and a number of visitors.
Since there were too many people around, I didn't take many pictures inside the depot.
A number of interesting special-purpose vehicles was also displayed, for example number 6408, type GP, nick-named "the rolling stage".
Taking photos of the heritage cars was much more easier in the streets around the depot. Here, a typically-looking heritage Viennese tram set.
Coming from the opposite direction, a "war-time standard tram" (KSW) with a trailer.
Even more interesting than the shuttle trams were these solo cars making short roundtrips around the remise. On this picture for example you can see number 2260, a type H1 tramcar, built in 1910, with war-time dim-out headlights and windows. This is how the car was used in 1944.
Number 345, type G4 from 1903. In the background, behind the low-floor ULF tram, you can already see the next heritage streetcar. It was old trams in every direction - I liked it very much!
Number 314 of type D1 was built in 1925 on the basis of a 1900 type D streetcar. It was used as a works car after it was withdrawn from passenger traffic in 1940, and was "rescued" by the VEF fellowship from the Wiener Lokalbahnen. On the picture you can see the personnel waving a flag as a direction indicator.
Because I already knew the old tramcars from the Viennese Tramway Museum in Erdberg and from my previous visits, I decided to look out for some other things in the city.
The core of the inner city was never served by trams. It's now percolated by subways (U-Bahn), and a few bus lines. Out of the latter, 2A is probably the most interesting, as it literally slips through the narrow gates of the old imperial palace (Hofburg).
Who says historical buildings and public transportation can't live together?
On the Ring, Vienna's illustrious boulevard around the old city core, we bumped into a mass demonstration...
... but when the people went away, this gave us the rare opportunity to take photos here without car traffic getting into the way!
You won't often see trams with all-over ads here nowadays, but this trailer car is one of the few exceptions.
Austria's federal railway company ÖBB introduced its new Bombardier "Talent" EMU's on the suburban S-Bahn railway lines recently, so we had to try those, too!
The interior of a Talent. The dot-matrix display was working properly - the blank bar in the caption is only there due to the shutter setting of my camera.
The same train at Handelskai.
We met similar EMU's on other S-Bahn routes, too.
We also saw trains of the Wiener Lokalbahnen suburban service operating with coupled units from its inner terminus at Kärtner Ring/Oper. They usuall split train sets at Wolfganggase and run solo cars from there, so I took a few pictures of this, too.
Another shot of the same multiple unit. We did not only take tram photos this day, so I hope you'll be okay when I say this is the end of this page :-)
If not: a couple of pictures taken in Vienna three days earlier...
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