Ostrava, Czech Republic
From nycsubway.org
Overview
The last city we went to visit was the furthest away: Ostrava. Four and a half hours by train from Prague, Ostrava is an industrial city close to the border with Poland. I suppose I should say *former* industrial city because much like American cities like Pittsburgh, the industry has moved on from Ostrava. Our hosts met us at Ostrava-Svinov railway station in the only operating Tatra T1 tram in the Czech Republic (built 1955). The enthusiastic crew first informed us that Ostrava has "the best maintained fleet of trams in CZ" and then that they had never had any American tourists come visit for the purpose of seeing the tram system.
We took the Tatra T1 first on a tour of the some of the city routes then out the single-tracked route #5 from Poruba to Zatisi. Other than the fact that this line is standard gauge it was very similar in operation to the Liberec-Jablonec interurban line we had ridden earlier in the week. Returning, we stopped off at the depot and got the full tour of their overhaul shop (they overhaul cars not only for themselves but for other Czech and European cities as well as Russia) and museum cars. They had some new Skoda Astra low floor cars on which they were finishing assembly, some Russian tram bodies that were being stripped, and various other cars in overhaul.
We finished up the trip riding one of the museum cars downtown to their Transit Shop at Vystaviste, and then back to Ostrava Hlavni Nadrazi for our trip home. They gave us some goodies, including a nice little binder with a city map and a complete set of transit timetables, and a souvenir brochure about 100 years of electric tramways in Ostrava. The Transit Shop downtown sold a number of tram and transit related memoribilia including some nice books, postcards, mousepads, mugs, etc. I'm sure we spent more money in there that afternoon than they had in a long time!
Photo Gallery
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 Image 25353 (179k, 1044x701) Photo by: David Pirmann Location: Depot Ustredni Dilny |  Image 25367 (165k, 1044x701) Photo by: David Pirmann Location: Depot Ustredni Dilny |  Image 25374 (170k, 1044x701) Photo by: David Pirmann Location: Vystaviste |  Image 25385 (194k, 1044x701) Photo by: David Pirmann Location: Vystaviste |  Image 25389 (200k, 1044x701) Photo by: David Pirmann Location: Vystaviste |