A new year begins and we continue with “Around the World in Trams” with a new location – Frankfurt in Germany.
As with many locations we have featured in this series, Frankfurt am Maim (to give it its full name) has a long history of trams. It started back in 1872 when horse trams first started to operate (and continued to do so until 1904), before steam trams ran between 1888 and 1929 and electric trams since 1884. Apart from the first 21 years of electric trams the city’s tramways have always operated on standard gauge. The network today runs for just short of 43 miles, includes 10 lines and a heritage tram line too.
The first photo we feature from this network shows 001 when operating a line 16 service on 29th September 2008. This tram was built in 1993 by Duewag and was one of 40 such trams built for Frankfurt. They have mostly survived although two (010 and 017) have been scrapped having been involved in separate accidents.
Photograph by Ken Jones, 29th September 2008