And on we go with our world tour in “Around the World in Trams”. This time we are off to Latvia to take a look at the trams which operate in Riga.
Riga is the capital of Latvia and is located on the Baltic Sea at the mouth of the River Daugava. Around a third of the total population of Latvia lives in the city and to help move people around trams first ran in 1882. These were first horse tram routes with the first electric trams operating in 1901. As with many cities across Eastern Europe, the fleet was dominated by Tatra trams but in more recent years there has been a modernisation of the fleet which has included the introduction of a fleet of Skoda 15T which first started to run in 2010.
But its one of the older order of trams that we feature in the below photo, a 1983 built Tatra T3A. Carrying the standard fleet livery of blue and off white, 30623 is working on route 10 which is one of six remaining routes on the network – it works from Bisumuiza to Riga Central Market. With the modernisation of the tramway this tram was withdrawn from service in 2020 and remains in store.
Photograph by David Jones, 8th June 2015