Heading downhill towards Coogee on the 373 is just beautiful and it would’ve been even better on a tram! Imagine young kids waiting weeks for a trip down to the beach seeing the sea from the tram and get so excited?! Hopefully in the future they’ll extend the L2 to Coogee. It would help me out quite a bit having a direct service rather than having to go to Museum or change at Randwick.
Unfortunately just about every city in the English speaking world, and a few other European countries, thought that changing to buses was a modern thing to do although cheapness probably had a lot to do with it too.
true. but buses are much quieter and environmentally friendly these days as the move toward electric happens. although there is still a lot of diesel buses around and god they are loud as they drive past.
7:42 is Sydney concrete pavement similar to Seattle's in being aggregated with large clasts/pebbles? (I think this is being phased out in Seattle actually)
No, not like the freeways I have seen breaking up where quite large round river stones are just tossed into the concrete. Ours are broken up somewhat smaller. Nowadays other materials are sometimes used as aggregate. Other unconventional materials are also more often now used in bitumen road and footpath surfaces,
Removing trams is one of the most stupid things many cities, globally, did in the 1960s. I wasn't around then, so have no idea why. I'd imagine since NSW, and Sydney, loves the Brits when it comes to infrastructure, for some ridiculous reason I'm sure, Beeching's influence reached even here.
Replacing trams with buses was unfortunately a disease through the English speaking world, not to mention Spain, Greece, France and some other countries as well. It started in the late 1920s in the USA as car ownership grew. After World War 2, all tramways were suffering from neglected track, buses were seen as much more modern, and cheaper than repairing tram track and worn out trams, and so it goes. Some say Melbourne only survived because the Liberal coalition refused to spend the money on new buses.
@@tressteleg1 there was a phase pretty much everywhere in the 50s and 60s. Some cities didn't have the ressources to convert everything to buses or had too ambitious projects (like replacing tram routes by subways or "Stadtbahn" as a mix of subway or trams). There were very few cities back then which fully backed their tram systems, although some even extended them as "temporary solutions". Some planned the replacement very long turn ("within the next 50 years") and changed their mind later. Some just didn't care and started to modernize their remaining systems in the 90s. This also applies to former communist countries. Those came around from the early 70s, when they realized there was no way to properly substitute their tram systems, but a lot of routes were closed before that anyways (often enough in a very arbitrary fashion, if you think politics in democracys are bad)...
@@sepruecom Attitudes towards trams vary considerably between nations. Generally, Holland Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, and the former Russian states remained largely in favour of trams which had comparatively few closures. The rest of the world seem to follow the bus replacement idea. And as you probably know, quite a few places have come to realise the folly of their decision but can now only afford to put in a small fraction of what they had before but ripped out.
@@tressteleg1 Now we are getting into the tentative parts of the discussions. Let's take Germany as the standard, in its political borders of today. Of the once roughly 130 tram networks 50 survived until today (many of the smaller ones in the former communist east). That means 38% survivors. A lot of networks were closed regardless, big cities like Hamburg and West-Berlin or smaller ones like Solingen or Reutlingen. Others were to be replaced by said "Stadtbahn" systems, which were meant to supersede the former tram networks. Cities like Bonn or Frankfurt/Main only decided to keep their non-Stadtbahn-Lines sometimes in the 80s or 90s, cities like Stuttgart or Hanover fully went through with the conversion and have no tram lines left today. Munich planned to close their tram network by 1994, and it was pretty much saved last minute in the 80s (unlike Hamburg, where trams did not survive). A lot of reports were made about the future of smaller town tram networks, most of which were planned to be closed long term, while short-term, less busy lines were closed. Examples of cities like that include Augsburg and Heidelberg, which closed their less busy lines, but ultimately kept their main lines. In some cases (e.g. Kiel) the planned full closure was also performed (in case of Kiel in 1985), after the less busy lines had been closed 20+ years prior. In Eastern Germany, things were slightly different, but even they phantasized about replacing tram networks. Trams were removed from some major throughfares and the inner city of Berlin. In general there was a lack of material, and the competition with West Germany made infrastructure a minor concern to the rulers, thus a number of small-town networks survived (which would have probably been closed in other socialist countries). Only Chemnitz went through with a major modernisation program, which included re-gauging their network from 925 mm to standard gauge, although they lost like 75% of network coverage that way. Also, Jena (East Germany) fantasized about replacing their tram with a monorail. Later they wanted to replace it by bus and trolleybus, only shortly before the end of the eastern block they decided to keep their tram network, since buses every 3 minutes into the new, southern parts of the city proved to be both uneconomical and inadequate. Most of the other countries you mentioned - while some still have a number of tram systems left, have actually a worse ratio of surviving systems than that. Both Holland and Belgium had large interurban systems, which were almost completely dismantled. But the city networks also suffered. It's not that hard to have a bad percentage of surviving systems, when Belgium has 5 surviving systems and the Netherlands has 3 (plus Utrecht, which is a newly built one). Many small towns had their own tram systems in those countries, and Belgian investors played a key role in building tram systems elsewhere around the world. Switzerland does not have trams, it only has railways. Some of those railways closely resemble trams (if it looks like a tram and dings like a tram... ;-) ), but are still considered railways (so you always have to yield to them as a driver). It's fun to travel on them, since their drivers don't give much of a f..t about other motorized road users ;-). There were many cities that lost their tram networks (bigger ones like Lausanne, smaller ones like Biel), and if we take these "tram-lookalikes" as a standard, only a tiny fraction of all existing "tram" networks survived there. And even survivors like Geneva and Bern only had small networks left, while Zurich planned to replace them by subway and trolleybus at some point and Basel also closed a number of branch lines (and at least one main line, which today is their most busy bus route) before they started to extend their network during the 80s again. Neuchatel also only has a single interurban line left, their town network was replaced by trolley buses. Austria also lost a bunch of networks, although those were mostly small (Salzburg (1 line), St Pölten (closed for an unpaid electricity bill, 1 line), Klagenfurt (3 lines), Ybbs (the only network which had "rowing-boat replacement services" in case of flooding the right-of-way, 1 line), plus a couple of interurbans). There were plans to replace the larger networks too (including phantasies of a large-scale subway network for vienna with like a dozen lines), but those didn't come to fruitition. Their loss ration is thus perhaps a bit better than the one of Germany. Italy lost a ton of networks, and the remaining ones were neglected for a long time. Italy was one of the most modern countries when it came to public transport up into the 50s, and thus also took the "bustitution" (and trolleybustitution) on in many cases. Only after DÜWAG began innovating in Germany they lost their status as one of the leading countries in the world. Only a minority are actually old networks (Rome, Napoli, Milano, Torino and that single route in Trieste, which has been out of service for nearly a decade now), the other 8 are new. Of the survivors, Rome, Napoli and Trieste are only a shadow of their former selves, while Torino (and Rome) have big issues with fleet availability, rendering large parts of their networks out-of-service for long periods of time. The Soviet Union and their successors are a different story entirely. Up until the 70s it was rare to use EMU configurations on their tram networks (at least outside of Moscow and Leningrad (St Petersburg), so trams, trolleybuses and buses had comparable capacities. The decision which of the three to implement were often political rather than logical, even after they started to use the capacity advantage of EMU trams. Khrushchev himself was known as an avid fan of trolleybus systems, so the time of his influence was not a good time for tram networks. There were plans to long-term phase out trams in many cities around the SU, and replace them by the usual combination of metro and buses or trolleybuses alone. Also, this erratic policy about which system to buid lead to issues after the end of communism, since trams did not necessarily connect the points of interest, but provided point-to-point connections (large apartment blocks to large industrial compound). Funny enough, in the mid 80s the communists (COMINTERN or CPSU) released a writ about trolley buses being the prime socialist means of transportation. This lead to a last hooray of building and extending trolleybus networks in both the SU and the other socialist countries, which was only cut short by the end of communism and the eastern block. In East Germany it was planned to replace a number of the smaller tram networks by trolley buses. If that had happened, our 38% standard for surviving German tram networks would have been worsened considerably... So, yeah, certainly more tram networks survived in these countries than elsewhere (or, in case of the SU (and less so Romania), many new networks were built regardless), but in the 50s and 60 there was a rough time for trams even in those countries, and for most of their cities there were at least plans to replace trams over the long term, even if new lines (or even networks) were built as a more short- to mid-term solution.
@sepruecom I read all your notes but certainly don’t have time to reply in detail. Many of the systems you told me about I already knew and rode a number of closed tramways you mentioned amd took movie film or video of them. Hamburg, Kiel, Eisenach are some I can think of. You never mentioned the stupid decision to get rid of all Moscow trolley buses recently. Most of my overseas movie and video has never been put on RUclips as my regular viewers are not interested in much that is overseas. However you may like to look at some of these, especially the Charleroi region Vicinal which I loved very much. Europe UK Trams Trains Trolleybuses ruclips.net/p/PLLtOIHp49XNC0_Yij1-K5sFXu_hAe5oZZ
😊👍. Physically, it looks like the original reservation sections are still available. Whether it would have the patronage to justify it is debatable. Bondi would be a more practical destination but the reservation at the beach end has been built over unfortunately. I don’t watch much on RUclips. Too much time is taken making my own. You will have to send me the link when yours is ready.
@@tressteleg1 Keep your eyes on my RUclips as I will be eventually getting up a version of Eastern Suburbs Railway including the Woollahra Station that never happened. ..more coming.
![[Front seat ride] STA Sydney m/o 1566 - Volvo B12BLE (ZF)](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/R9E7hNZD5Nw/mqdefault.jpg)
Heading downhill towards Coogee on the 373 is just beautiful and it would’ve been even better on a tram! Imagine young kids waiting weeks for a trip down to the beach seeing the sea from the tram and get so excited?! Hopefully in the future they’ll extend the L2 to Coogee. It would help me out quite a bit having a direct service rather than having to go to Museum or change at Randwick.
Great drive . Thanks cobber .
😊👍
Removing tram lines, in favor of diesel buses, is not a good idea.
Thanks tresstleg1 for the ride.👌💚
Unfortunately just about every city in the English speaking world, and a few other European countries, thought that changing to buses was a modern thing to do although cheapness probably had a lot to do with it too.
true. but buses are much quieter and environmentally friendly these days as the move toward electric happens. although there is still a lot of diesel buses around and god they are loud as they drive past.
7:42 is Sydney concrete pavement similar to Seattle's in being aggregated with large clasts/pebbles? (I think this is being phased out in Seattle actually)
No, not like the freeways I have seen breaking up where quite large round river stones are just tossed into the concrete. Ours are broken up somewhat smaller. Nowadays other materials are sometimes used as aggregate. Other unconventional materials are also more often now used in bitumen road and footpath surfaces,
Removing trams is one of the most stupid things many cities, globally, did in the 1960s. I wasn't around then, so have no idea why. I'd imagine since NSW, and Sydney, loves the Brits when it comes to infrastructure, for some ridiculous reason I'm sure, Beeching's influence reached even here.
Replacing trams with buses was unfortunately a disease through the English speaking world, not to mention Spain, Greece, France and some other countries as well. It started in the late 1920s in the USA as car ownership grew. After World War 2, all tramways were suffering from neglected track, buses were seen as much more modern, and cheaper than repairing tram track and worn out trams, and so it goes. Some say Melbourne only survived because the Liberal coalition refused to spend the money on new buses.
@@tressteleg1 there was a phase pretty much everywhere in the 50s and 60s. Some cities didn't have the ressources to convert everything to buses or had too ambitious projects (like replacing tram routes by subways or "Stadtbahn" as a mix of subway or trams). There were very few cities back then which fully backed their tram systems, although some even extended them as "temporary solutions". Some planned the replacement very long turn ("within the next 50 years") and changed their mind later. Some just didn't care and started to modernize their remaining systems in the 90s.
This also applies to former communist countries. Those came around from the early 70s, when they realized there was no way to properly substitute their tram systems, but a lot of routes were closed before that anyways (often enough in a very arbitrary fashion, if you think politics in democracys are bad)...
@@sepruecom Attitudes towards trams vary considerably between nations. Generally, Holland Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, and the former Russian states remained largely in favour of trams which had comparatively few closures. The rest of the world seem to follow the bus replacement idea. And as you probably know, quite a few places have come to realise the folly of their decision but can now only afford to put in a small fraction of what they had before but ripped out.
@@tressteleg1 Now we are getting into the tentative parts of the discussions.
Let's take Germany as the standard, in its political borders of today. Of the once roughly 130 tram networks 50 survived until today (many of the smaller ones in the former communist east). That means 38% survivors.
A lot of networks were closed regardless, big cities like Hamburg and West-Berlin or smaller ones like Solingen or Reutlingen. Others were to be replaced by said "Stadtbahn" systems, which were meant to supersede the former tram networks. Cities like Bonn or Frankfurt/Main only decided to keep their non-Stadtbahn-Lines sometimes in the 80s or 90s, cities like Stuttgart or Hanover fully went through with the conversion and have no tram lines left today. Munich planned to close their tram network by 1994, and it was pretty much saved last minute in the 80s (unlike Hamburg, where trams did not survive). A lot of reports were made about the future of smaller town tram networks, most of which were planned to be closed long term, while short-term, less busy lines were closed. Examples of cities like that include Augsburg and Heidelberg, which closed their less busy lines, but ultimately kept their main lines. In some cases (e.g. Kiel) the planned full closure was also performed (in case of Kiel in 1985), after the less busy lines had been closed 20+ years prior.
In Eastern Germany, things were slightly different, but even they phantasized about replacing tram networks. Trams were removed from some major throughfares and the inner city of Berlin. In general there was a lack of material, and the competition with West Germany made infrastructure a minor concern to the rulers, thus a number of small-town networks survived (which would have probably been closed in other socialist countries). Only Chemnitz went through with a major modernisation program, which included re-gauging their network from 925 mm to standard gauge, although they lost like 75% of network coverage that way.
Also, Jena (East Germany) fantasized about replacing their tram with a monorail. Later they wanted to replace it by bus and trolleybus, only shortly before the end of the eastern block they decided to keep their tram network, since buses every 3 minutes into the new, southern parts of the city proved to be both uneconomical and inadequate.
Most of the other countries you mentioned - while some still have a number of tram systems left, have actually a worse ratio of surviving systems than that.
Both Holland and Belgium had large interurban systems, which were almost completely dismantled. But the city networks also suffered. It's not that hard to have a bad percentage of surviving systems, when Belgium has 5 surviving systems and the Netherlands has 3 (plus Utrecht, which is a newly built one). Many small towns had their own tram systems in those countries, and Belgian investors played a key role in building tram systems elsewhere around the world.
Switzerland does not have trams, it only has railways. Some of those railways closely resemble trams (if it looks like a tram and dings like a tram... ;-) ), but are still considered railways (so you always have to yield to them as a driver). It's fun to travel on them, since their drivers don't give much of a f..t about other motorized road users ;-). There were many cities that lost their tram networks (bigger ones like Lausanne, smaller ones like Biel), and if we take these "tram-lookalikes" as a standard, only a tiny fraction of all existing "tram" networks survived there. And even survivors like Geneva and Bern only had small networks left, while Zurich planned to replace them by subway and trolleybus at some point and Basel also closed a number of branch lines (and at least one main line, which today is their most busy bus route) before they started to extend their network during the 80s again. Neuchatel also only has a single interurban line left, their town network was replaced by trolley buses.
Austria also lost a bunch of networks, although those were mostly small (Salzburg (1 line), St Pölten (closed for an unpaid electricity bill, 1 line), Klagenfurt (3 lines), Ybbs (the only network which had "rowing-boat replacement services" in case of flooding the right-of-way, 1 line), plus a couple of interurbans). There were plans to replace the larger networks too (including phantasies of a large-scale subway network for vienna with like a dozen lines), but those didn't come to fruitition. Their loss ration is thus perhaps a bit better than the one of Germany.
Italy lost a ton of networks, and the remaining ones were neglected for a long time. Italy was one of the most modern countries when it came to public transport up into the 50s, and thus also took the "bustitution" (and trolleybustitution) on in many cases. Only after DÜWAG began innovating in Germany they lost their status as one of the leading countries in the world. Only a minority are actually old networks (Rome, Napoli, Milano, Torino and that single route in Trieste, which has been out of service for nearly a decade now), the other 8 are new. Of the survivors, Rome, Napoli and Trieste are only a shadow of their former selves, while Torino (and Rome) have big issues with fleet availability, rendering large parts of their networks out-of-service for long periods of time.
The Soviet Union and their successors are a different story entirely. Up until the 70s it was rare to use EMU configurations on their tram networks (at least outside of Moscow and Leningrad (St Petersburg), so trams, trolleybuses and buses had comparable capacities. The decision which of the three to implement were often political rather than logical, even after they started to use the capacity advantage of EMU trams. Khrushchev himself was known as an avid fan of trolleybus systems, so the time of his influence was not a good time for tram networks. There were plans to long-term phase out trams in many cities around the SU, and replace them by the usual combination of metro and buses or trolleybuses alone. Also, this erratic policy about which system to buid lead to issues after the end of communism, since trams did not necessarily connect the points of interest, but provided point-to-point connections (large apartment blocks to large industrial compound).
Funny enough, in the mid 80s the communists (COMINTERN or CPSU) released a writ about trolley buses being the prime socialist means of transportation. This lead to a last hooray of building and extending trolleybus networks in both the SU and the other socialist countries, which was only cut short by the end of communism and the eastern block. In East Germany it was planned to replace a number of the smaller tram networks by trolley buses. If that had happened, our 38% standard for surviving German tram networks would have been worsened considerably...
So, yeah, certainly more tram networks survived in these countries than elsewhere (or, in case of the SU (and less so Romania), many new networks were built regardless), but in the 50s and 60 there was a rough time for trams even in those countries, and for most of their cities there were at least plans to replace trams over the long term, even if new lines (or even networks) were built as a more short- to mid-term solution.
@sepruecom I read all your notes but certainly don’t have time to reply in detail. Many of the systems you told me about I already knew and rode a number of closed tramways you mentioned amd took movie film or video of them. Hamburg, Kiel, Eisenach are some I can think of. You never mentioned the stupid decision to get rid of all Moscow trolley buses recently. Most of my overseas movie and video has never been put on RUclips as my regular viewers are not interested in much that is overseas. However you may like to look at some of these, especially the Charleroi region Vicinal which I loved very much.
Europe UK Trams Trains Trolleybuses
ruclips.net/p/PLLtOIHp49XNC0_Yij1-K5sFXu_hAe5oZZ
Thanks for this.Most interesting. Maybe it all should come back, again, someday? Hope you will check out my Parra Light rail Prep videos, soon.
😊👍. Physically, it looks like the original reservation sections are still available. Whether it would have the patronage to justify it is debatable. Bondi would be a more practical destination but the reservation at the beach end has been built over unfortunately.
I don’t watch much on RUclips. Too much time is taken making my own. You will have to send me the link when yours is ready.
@@tressteleg1 Keep your eyes on my RUclips as I will be eventually getting up a version of Eastern Suburbs Railway including the Woollahra Station that never happened. ..more coming.