Thanks to those who inquired about Clare’s recovery after they read about her accident in the final episode of my previous report, and to those who encouraged me to continue writing about my travels. Many other recipients also wrote to me with questions or corrections to particular portions of the reports, and sometimes just comments. I hope you will enjoy this next series.
Clare’s accident in Kiev during June put a dent into our plans for a trip two months later to the Baltic countries with a different German electric traction group. We were going to join the VDVA (Verband Deutscher Verkehrs-Amateure) on a tour that would cover all three cities in Latvia that have tramways, plus Tallinn, Estonia and Helsinki, Finland. We had signed up for it, but it had become clear that Clare was in no condition for further traveling, nor was she enthused about another tour with a bunch of rail enthusiasts. Fortunately we hadn’t made our air reservations for that trip.
On the other hand, Clare was improving rapidly, and she had a great group of friends and relatives supporting her and keeping her busy, so she urged me to find a replacement for her and go on the trip anyway. I ended up doing just that, traveling and rooming with Karl-Heinz Roeber, who Clare and I met on the Intra-Express tour of North Africa some years ago, and again saw in Ukraine on our previous trip. I had originally planned to meet Clare in Riga (she would have flown directly to there from the U. S.), after I first traveled to various cities with tramways in Hungary on my own. She suggested I continue with those plans, but I replaced Hungary with England when I found some incredibly low air fares to the British Isles.
Norwegian Air Shuttle was introducing non-stop service to Edinburgh from Stewart Airport, which is located on the west side of the Hudson
Tuesday, August 15. After an excellent night’s sleep I awoke to overcast skies and headed down, across and down again to the hotel’s breakfast room, where the aroma of frying bacon whetted my appetite for the quintessential full English breakfast. There were a number of couples at other tables when I took my seat next to a window and related my order to one of the proprietors–one breakfast with tea, but hold the baked beans. The fried eggs, sausage, bacon, grilled tomato, mushrooms and hash browns were delicious (and not too greasy), and while I ate, conversing with some of the others nearby, I saw the weather begin to brighten, and then turn to rain again. The other visitors were all on “holiday,” and lived in cities not too far away and were curious about why an American would come to Blackpool.
Of course I mentioned my interest in the tramway, but also said I enjoyed the laid back ambience of British resorts, and mentioned the Richard Gere, Jennifer Lopez, Susan Sarandon movie “Shall We Dance,” which was shot in Blackpool (by Harvey Weinstein’s company). The same atmosphere is also prominent in one of my favorite British flicks, John Osbourne’s “The Entertainer” (starring Laurence Olivier), which takes place in a similar setting, but further north in the resort of Morecambe (I guess they didn’t want the trams to distract moviegoers from the drama).
I soon finished, and saw the hotel had all sorts of brochures about Blackpool, including several for the historic tram operation, which I collected. I returned to the room, washed up and packed, finally going back down to check out and leave my bags until just before train time, which was scheduled for 17:12 that afternoon. At about 9:00 I stepped out into bright sunlight for the 6-bl
Balloon car 715 lays over on the Pleasure Beach loop prior to its next run northward past the Tower to North Beach.
I continued on a regular car to the end of the line at Starr Gate (3 stops), returned to Pleasure Beach, and then rode another vintage car to the heart of the amusement area. I took some photos at Starr Gate and then walked back to Pleasure Beach, stopping for a few additional views along the quiet, park-like, semi-elevated walkway located between the Promenade/trams and the beach/sea. Starr Gate Depot was built along the old loop in 2011 and now houses the modern tram fleet. Since they are double ended, service cars need not circumscribe the loop and instead reverse after the double track morphs into the single track carhouse lead. The huge Rigby Road Depot from 1935 is still extant, and now houses the heritage fleet, including all the Balloon trams. It is accessible via street trackage via Lytham and Hopton Roads from the Promenade near the Manchester Square stop.
The rear of a Flexity near the Waterloo Road stop south of the Tower. The dunes and beach fronting the Irish Sea are shown on the left.
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With the edit button restored, No. 3 has been inserted in its right place in the earlier post, and here continues the completion of the postings for the UK for this trip:
Wednesday, August 16 continued. Arrival in Nottingham was on the advertised a few minutes after 2 o’clock, and after I bought a day ticket from a machine for GBP 4, I found Andrew and Richard waiting for me at the elevated tramway station.
Called Nottingham Express Transit, or NET, the 20-mile long tramway network in this city of roughly 275,000 residents was opened in two phases, with the two lines that run northward from the railway station through the downtown area coming first in 2004, followed by two extensions continuing south and southwestward in 2015, more than doubling the length of the now 51-station network. Clare and I visited Nottingham in 2005, when I rode the original system, which I liked very much. The main purpose of this visit was to cover the new branches, whose trams are through routed with the lines to the north, which makes the lines quite long (see http://www.urbanrail.net/eu/uk/nott/nottingham.htm for a map).
No text will be missing by the end of this day, Wednesday, 13 June. But, I still have no idea which photos you can see and which have vanished in the transmittal. If photos are missing, then let me know, and I will use the edit buttono to put them at the locations of their captions.
Meanwhile, for the sake of my own sanity and self-preservation, I have assembled two pdf books for Jack’s Southern Euroepan tour and now am working on the one for Great Britain.
With others receiving Jack’s travel report not posting its insallments, I guess it is left to me to do so. To make it easy, I will wait until all the British Isles reports are received, have the book on those reports reviewed by Jack to check on my editing, keep a Word version when putting it into Pdf, and then post the whole thing in one new thread in one new posting. I wll then ask that this thread be removed with the new one replacing it. Then also do similarly for the second half of the three-week tour. Meanwhile, this can stay as is. Now see below as per 1 June '18.
But rather than start a new thread, I am asking the moderator to delete all my posts after the first two. As soon as this is done and I visit the website, at a wideband location, I will in one posting add installments 3 - 11 or 12 to complete Jacks UK visit report with all installments in proper order. Thanks!
Thanks for all this David. I feel for you…definitely a frustrating and difficult task for you…and all this after years and years of incredible and significant information and contributions. Your enthusiasm is admirable.
I certainly hope these tribulations will end soon.
he Edit button has been returned to me, and I plan on posting all photos with then next few days. Meanwhile, here is a continuation of the story, photos to come:
Monday, August 21. I awoke at 4:45 to get ready for my 7:00 Ryanair flight to Riga. As mentioned in the initial part of this report, the second half of my trip would involve joining the VDVA (Verband Deutscher Verkehrs-Amateure), a German railfan organization on its tour of the Baltic States. I was bypassing the Lithuanian portion of the trip (Lithuania does not have streetcars), but would meet up with the group in Riga in the evening. While my Holiday Inn Express in Castle Donington did not have a Business Center, it certainly had an excellent breakfast policy aimed at its clients heading for East Midlands Airport, with fresh food (fruit and pastries) and hot beverages available starting at 4 a.m., and a full breakfast buffet at 6:00. I finished my Continental Breakfast at 5:35 and then began my trip to the Continent.
Skylink, the bus company that delivered me to the Holiday Inn, has a robust early morning timetable serving the airport:
Lv Pegasus Business Park 5:42 5:47 6:02 6:10 6:17 6:32
Ar EMA Airport 5:45 5:51 6:05 6:14 6:20 6:35
I was able to catch the 5:42, which arrived
Still a lot of photos to be posted and a few Blackpool captions relocated to the right place, but there is progress. Particularly notable are the Isle of Man photos, including the narrow gauge interurban and two narrow-gauge steam lines.
Saturday, August 26. The events of Friday, August 25 in Riga were related in before the discussion of Liepaja. Today was getaway day from that Riga, with our bus scheduled to leave at 9:00 and arrive in Tallinn, Estonia, some 200 miles due north, at 13:30. But it didn’t quite happen that way for several reasons (excuses?), and we didn’t check in at our hotel (in a rather chaotic way–the hotel didn’t know we were coming?) until after 16:30. It turns out that the hostelry is an ancient landmark, the building dating from the end of the 14th century, becoming a hotel in the early 1990s, after Estonia’s communist regime fell. This probably explains why it doesn’t have an elevator–and I was not pleased our room was on the third floor (it could have been worse–others had to climb to the fourth–ugh). The Gotthard Residents is in Tallinn’s beautiful old city, among its narrow s
I had problems today with Imgur. Pictures dissapearing as soon as I tried to use the copy image button. I may have solvd the problem for use tomorrow, but if anyone has suggestions. Let me know.
Today, Tuesday, the 19th. This posting is a test. The German WWII 2-10-0 sent to Russia and used in Lithuania and Estonia and now on a plinth outside the Talilin RR Sta:
Bad news today. Started having problems with Imgur, then the problems grew to encompass every website, which started govomg the timed out message. No problems until I pulled up Imgur, and problems don’t exist with the narrow-band server at the Yeshiva ---- except that Imgur is unavailable with narrow-band!
So no progress on adding photos today, unless someone can email me a suggested alternative.
Apologies and thanks
This is a test posting. I am going to try every possible way of posting a picture while still on the Yeshvia’s narrow-band server and not using an additonal website. I am by no means assured of success, but I feel an obligation to at least try;
jpg:
Didn;t work
pdf:
didn;t work
gif:
didn’t work, would have distorted colors anway.
tif:
didn’t work
png:
didn’t work
Libra Office
None of these ideas worked. Anything else worth trying?
posted a few pix today 21 June before Imgur started giving problems
Was able to add some more photos today, and should complete Talilin on Sunday, 24 June, completing Jack’s Baltic States narrative.
Hopefully, Imgur will work well Sunday, and I will be able to add all the required photos for the text that follows without any problems.
Sunday, 24 June '18: Success!
Sunday, August 27. We didn’t have to get up too early for breakfast on what looked to be a fine sunny day, as our bus, which would take us to the nearby carbarn and shop, wasn’t scheduled to leave until 9:00. Upon our arrival we had plenty of time to wander around the facility and take photos, as our two-car charter over the portion of the tramway that was operating wouldn’t leave until 10:15 (less than a week later and the network would have been almost twice as large). Here are a few photos from the carhouse area.
With good luck yesterday on posting the photos I planned to post, hopefully, this will be true tomorrow, Tuesday the 26th. So I here is the text for comopleting Jack’s visit to Helsinki, today, Monday, with the photos to be added tomorrow when hopefully I will be able to use the HOC-Mt. Scopus wifi.
Martin Heyneck has corrected my comment about the Variotram being specifically built for the meter gauge market, stating that the prototype delivered in 1993 for Chemnitz was standard gauge. He further indicated that the the prototype was a 100-percent low-floor car, but the meter gauge version, which came out three years later, was only 75-percent low floor. The ill-fated Helsinki cars were the first 100-percent low-floor version of the meter-gauge design.
Tuesday, August 29
Martin Heyneck has corrected my comment about the Variotram being specifically built for the meter gauge market, stating that the prototype delivered in 1993 for Chemnitz was standard gauge. He further indicated that the the prototype was a 100-percent low-floor car, but the meter gauge version, which came out three years later, was only 75-percent low floor. The ill-fated Helsinki cars were the first 100-percent low-floor version of the meter-gauge design.
Tuesday, August 29 continued. After splitting away from the group’s activities, we noticed that clouds were rolling in (as predicted), so we decided we would have to move quickly to outrace the weather if we wanted well-lit photos of the metro.
Thursday, August 31. We awoke to a rainy morning and while the forecast indicated the precipitation would stop, the skies would not be very inviting–it would remain overcast all day. Thus we decided to postpone riding the City Sparvag tram (route 7) until Friday and instead would start our activities by going out to the Roslagsbanan. We took the Green Line to T-Centralen and then rode the Red line to Tekniska hogskolen (Technical high school), which is adjacent to the Stockholms Ostra station (Stockholm East). See http://www.urbanrail.net/eu/se/stockholm/stockhlm.htm to follow our activities.
The Roslagsbanan now consists of three narrow-gauge commuter lines that run to the north and northwest. Once part of a railway system that extended far into rural areas from Sweden’s capital, including Hallstavik, some 65 miles north of the city, the 891-mm gauge system (“Swedish 3-foot gauge” actually 29/32 inches short of 3 feet) still terminates at Stockholms Ostra. Its first line opened in 1885 and the initial portion of the system was electrified with 1500-volt DC catenary some ten years later (Sweden’s first railroad electrification). Overhead wire continued to be pushed northward on the mainline and along various branche
Friday, September 1. All good things must come to an end, and this trip was no exception. This last chapter covers Stockholm’s No. 7 line and the activities of our last day in the Baltic region. Friday dawned overcast, but the forecast indicated it would clear up. After breakfast Karl-Heinz and I checked out of our hotel and left our luggage with the desk clerk. We walked to Radmansgatan and took the Green Line to Alvik, where we saw some blue sky to the northeast, and so rode the Tvarbanan to Solna Business Park. Here we photographed the 22 at the bridge over the railway (displayed in chapter 31) and the railway from above (shown in chapter 30). Then we headed downtown via the Blue Line to its terminal at Kungstradgarden to ride and finally get some good photos of the Sparvag City line, route 7, now that the clouds were disintegrating.
Tram route 7 is a story of persistence, first for the creation of a heritage tram line, and then for its development into a meaningful transit route with modern equipment (while still retaining scheduled heritage operations). The initiative for the project started even before the abandonment of the bulk of Stockholm’s streetcar system in 1967, with a campaign for retention of tram operation on the island of Djurgarden, a park-like venue of recreation and leisure-time activities, and home to a number of tourist attractions and museums, a mere mile from the city center. The battle was eventually led by the Stockholm chapter of the Swedish Tramway Society, operator of a tramway museum in Malmkoping, some 70 mil