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Kinki Sharyo #929
18 february 2010 - Cairo. Where? Well, that's a good question. Openstreetmap quotes the name of the street as Al-Montazah, Google as El Shaheed Loaa Mahmoud Adel, whereas a map created in 2000 probably for Blickpunkt Strassenbahn shows the terminus as Midan Alf Maskan. Sod this. Let's wave goodbye to Cairo, the next pictures will be from Alexandria!
Author: straphan
Place: القاهرة (al-Qāhirah) (القاهرة (al-Qāhira))
| Owner: CTA القاهرة (al-Qāhirah)
Comments: 10
Kinki Sharyo #1028
18 february 2010 - Cairo, Midan Roxy. A pretty full two-car tram prepares to enter the final section of its journey to Ramses square, which is on totally segregated track.
Author: straphan
Place: القاهرة (al-Qāhirah) (القاهرة (al-Qāhira))
| Owner: CTA القاهرة (al-Qāhirah)
Comments: 4
Kinki Sharyo #1030
18 february 2010 - Cairo, El Nouzha. A Heliopolis Metro tram has just arrived at this terminus, whereas a route 32 car on the right is departing towards Midan Al-Sayyid Al-Mirghani. You can see the subtle differences between the exterior appearance of the "metro" and "city" cars.
Author: straphan
Place: القاهرة (al-Qāhirah) (القاهرة (al-Qāhira))
| Owner: CTA القاهرة (al-Qāhirah)
Comments: 2
Kinki Sharyo #1012
18 february 2010 - Cairo, corner of Osman Ibn Afan and Abd El Aziz Fahmy streets. A three-car rusty old banger leaves the outskirts of Heliopolis on a nearly hour-long journey to central Cairo. The speeds achieved by these cars are - despite the terrible state of the tracks - not too bad at all, and thanks to segregated tracks the vehicles do not have to stand in the huge traffic jams. Sadly - the neglect and the state of disrepair of the vehicles means, that you sometimes need to stand a good 45 minutes at the stop before the next tram comes.
Author: straphan
Place: القاهرة (al-Qāhirah) (القاهرة (al-Qāhira))
| Owner: CTA القاهرة (al-Qāhirah)
Comments: 2
Kinki Sharyo #6068
18 february 2010 - Cairo, outside Port Said depot. Cars 6068+6067 have just traversed the 2km-long service track between El Matariya and the depot, and are now at the depot gates. As a CTA worker met outside the depot said, the great Port Said depot (see satellite picture) only runs around 17 trams a day - which works out to 1-2 per route. And - sadly - the cars do tend appear at the stops in rather irregular intervals. Also, despite there being quite a few passengers riding in them, buses running on parallel routes appear far more crowded.
Author: straphan
Place: القاهرة (al-Qāhirah) (القاهرة (al-Qāhira))
| Owner: CTA القاهرة (al-Qāhirah)
Comments: 2
Kinki Sharyo Cairo #4088
18 february 2010 - Cairo, Port Said depot. As I had mentioned previously, Cairo still has two functioning tram depots. The Heliopolis depot runs the Heliopolis Metro lines, whereas the Port Said depot runs the remainder of the Heliopolis routes. Sadly, after long negotiations, we were refused entry to the depot. However - as in Helwan - the first available tramcar was rolled out for us.
Author: straphan
Place: القاهرة (al-Qāhirah) (القاهرة (al-Qāhira))
| Owner: CTA القاهرة (al-Qāhirah)
Comments: 5
Kinki Sharyo #6010
18 february 2010 - Cairo, El Matariya. We began our last day in Cairo with bad news - the CTA denied us access to the tram depots, because we were tourists, not businessmen. Nevertheless we decided that it would be worth giving it a shot, so we set off for Port Said depot to see what we could get out of the guys at the gate. We started our trip at El Matariya.
Author: straphan
Place: القاهرة (al-Qāhirah) (القاهرة (al-Qāhira))
| Owner: CTA القاهرة (al-Qāhirah)
Comments: 4
Kinki Sharyo #6029
17 february 2010 - Cairo, Midan Ismaillia. And a close-up of the coupling between the two cars. What is interesting is that despite a complete lack of chains or anything like that between the two cars we did not see anyone who fancied a free ride between the cars. This is probably down to two things - the completely horrible state of the tracks and the fact, that the trams run through a rather affluent part of the city, whose inhabitants don't feel the need to risk their lives to save 50 piastre (6p) for the ticket...
Comments: 8
Kinki Sharyo #6029
17 july 2010 - Cairo, Midan Ismaillia. A route 5 tram (El Matariya - Midan Ismaillia - the shortest in Cairo) has just arrived at the terminus. The new trackbed suggests a reactivation of the curve connecting the no. 5 on Omar Ibn El Khatab street with Osman Ibn Afan street where a route of the Heliopolis Metro runs. However, given the state and the perspectives of the Cairo network, this is a step towards the rationalisation of the network when further sections of it will be taken out of use.
Kinki Sharyo #6067
17 february 2010 - Cairo, King Hussain Bin Talal square. A group of strangely acting tourists takes pictures of a route 33 tram and of the pointsman at the junction, who resides in his little hut by the junction and takes his naps on a Tatra K5AR seat. That was probably the only trace of the tatras we could see in all of Cairo.
Author: straphan
Place: القاهرة (al-Qāhirah) (القاهرة (al-Qāhira))
| Owner: CTA القاهرة (al-Qāhirah)
Comments: 9
Kinki Sharyo #825
17 february 2010 - Cairo, El Nozha. As part of the "powdering the dead guy" exercise, some vehicles running between Heliopolis and Ramses Square have been repainted in CTA livery. Sadly - the interiors of the vehicles are still in a terrible condition as David's photos show.
Author: straphan
Place: القاهرة (al-Qāhirah) (القاهرة (al-Qāhira))
| Owner: CTA القاهرة (al-Qāhirah)
Comments: 7
Kinki Sharyo #808
17 february 2010 - Cairo, Kulliet Al-Banat. The trams that run as the Heliopolis metro have a different paint scheme than the 'city' cars. They also have slightly different front designs, soft seats and a film with destinations written on it, rather than boards with route numbers. Due to our lack of language skills riding these was a bit of a lottery, although I think the routes are marked by colours. The tram in the picture is approaching a junction with the branch lines to El Nasr and Abbasiya, which were quite recently closed down due to the construction of the third metro line.
Author: straphan
Place: القاهرة (al-Qāhirah) (القاهرة (al-Qāhira))
| Owner: CTA القاهرة (al-Qāhirah)
Kinki Sharyo #1012
17 february 2010 - Cairo, Midan Ramsis. We are now at Cairo's main public transport hub - we've got the central Ramses railway station, both metro lines and the terminus of the Empain-built tram line to Heliopolis. The route runs from here towards the north-east on a fully segregated alignment till Midan Roxy, where it joins the road network running in the middle of dual carriageways. Despite the tracks being absolutely catastrophic, the trams can still manage around 40km/h on a good day, and with a little good will and money this could be a great start of a Stadtbahn-type network. Even the natives refer to this line as metro. Sadly, according to our source at the CTA, upon the opening of the 'real' metro line 3, the Cairo trams are to disappear...
Author: straphan
Place: القاهرة (al-Qāhirah) (القاهرة (al-Qāhira))
| Owner: CTA القاهرة (al-Qāhirah)
Comments: 2
Hitachi / SEMAF #4283
16 february 2010 - Cairo, El Matariya. This terminus is the most important point on the tramway network, because here is where most of the routes end. This is also one end of a 2km long access track to Port Said depot, which the trams sometimes need to traverse against the traffic flow. This also used to be a border point between the city and Heliopolis trams - the Heliopolis trams ended here, whereas the city trams ended 100m away, on the other side of the square. Initially the two weren't even connected - the connection was built when both networks were united under the auspices of the CTA.
Author: straphan
Place: القاهرة (al-Qāhirah) (القاهرة (al-Qāhira))
| Owner: CTA القاهرة (al-Qāhirah)
Hitachi / SEMAF #4261
16 february 2010 - Cairo, Midan Al-Sayyid Al-Mirghani. Cairo used to have two tram networks and a trolleybus network. The city centre network used to belong to the CTA, whereas the network in Heliopolis was managed by the company formed by Baron Empain. Somewhere along the way the CTA took over the entire network, but the differences in vehicle types are easily seen. This is probably one of the newest tram vehicles in Cairo - a result of the cooperation between Toshiba and Hitachi - as it rumbles past a square in Heliopolis.
Author: straphan
Place: القاهرة (al-Qāhirah) (القاهرة (al-Qāhira))
| Owner: CTA القاهرة (al-Qāhirah)
Comments: 1
Kinki Sharyo #6057
16 february 2010 - Cairo, Midan Nady Al-Zubbat. After failed negotiations between Dave and a CTA representative about letting us into the depot, we asked our driver to deposit us in Heliopolis in order to take our first pictures of the capital's trams. And here a few words of explanation are in order: Heliopolis is a city founded by Edouard Louis Joseph, Baron Empain - a Belgian magnate, whom we would today call a developer. The good Baron bought around 25 sq km east of Cairo and connected them with a suburban tram to the city centre (of course the track gauge was 1000mm just like the Vicinales of his native Belgium). Here he started building luxury residences, a gigantic hotel (today it is the presidential palace) and a leisure park. Heliopolis is criss-crossed by such wide avenues with trams running in the median strip. Here is our first picture of a Cairo tram.
Comments: 5
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