Kramatorsk tram

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The Kramatorsk tram (Ukrainian Краматорський трамвай ) was a tram company opened on May 12, 1937 in the Ukrainian city ​​of Kramatorsk . After years of neglected maintenance, the last line was shut down on August 1, 2017.

Brief description

The first tram line went into operation on May 12, 1937, but during the Second World War it was inactive from November 1941 to March 10, 1944. After that, there were considerable extensions until 1969. On November 18, 1971, however, the transport company opened its first Trolleybus line.

From 1973 the trolleybus network was further expanded, extensions or extensions for the track network of the tram hardly took place from then on. From 1973 onwards, the transport company purchased KTM 5 vehicles to replace the two-axle vehicles that had been in use until then, the last of which were in use in 1979.

Route network

The consistently double-track network comprised a maximum of five lines. Part of it was on its own track, other significant parts were flush with the street. The last, now disused line was 14.6 km long.

Decline

From the turn of the millennium, the importance of local public transport decreased significantly: De-industrialization and increasing individual traffic caused the number of users to shrink significantly. 24 KTM-5s were available in 2001, of which only 15 were needed for daily exercise; there were almost exclusively solo cars . In the end there were eight poorly maintained vehicles, of which only five were used.

The operationally important route to the train station and the old town was the first to be shut down in 2003. Even after that, it took twelve years to open a trolleybus route for them.

literature

  • BEKUS (d. I. Bernhard Kußmagk): Ukraine: Krematorsk - tram shut down. In: Straßenbahn Magazin , issue 10/2017, p. 15.