In honor of booking my fall trip to Vienna, Budapest, and Prague, I'll post some youtube clips from some of these cities in the coming days. Anyone have any suggestions on places I should visit? I know I'm going to try and find a Combino Supra like the one in the movie below. Longest Tram in the World. Notice there are no couplers. The locals call it 'the Caterpillar'. Also, Budapest' subway is the oldest in mainland Western Europe (London's Underground is the first).
But I'll make sure I pay the fare, instead of perhaps doing it the more dangerous way as seen below.
2 comments:
I wrote a long diary on Budapest trams over at European Tribune, also with 'suggestions for tourists' at the end. You won't miss the Combino Supras, because by now, they have taken over traffic on the Grand Boulevard (lines 4/6) completely. (When I made the photo for my dKos diary, I saw 35 of the 40 in simultaneous rush-hour operation.)
Minor correction: the Combino Supras do have couplers, but normally hidden behind a closing door. They are simple foldable emergency couplers, though - look at this and this picture.
In fact, just two days ago, the traffic company staged a publicity stunt of lining up all 40 Combinos (two kilometres long) and staging a competition for its employees of who can run all the way through all of them the fastest. I found no good photos of that (yet), however, you can go here and watch the bottom three linked DivX.avi videos of two linked-up Combino Supras (this was during delivery time: what you see is an already commissioned Combino functioning as shunter locomotive for a newly arrived sister that still lacks a running permit.)
Thanks. I'll put up a link soon.
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