[PRCo] Porto and Sintra

[Fred Schneider]

Regarding Bill Robb's Lisbon pictures … 

I made one and only one trip to Portugal and that was in March 1995.   Our transportation superintendent at the Baltimore Streetcar Museum wanted to go and he was not in the best of health so I accompanied him … good choice because he did have a stroke on the trip and wound up testing socialized medicine in London!   

We spent most of the time in Lisbon but made a one day trip up to Porto (Oporto).   In 1995, Oporto (the English spelling) had one active trolley line left and a lot of unused wired track left in the streets.   It was astonishing to me to board an early 1900s two-axle knock-off of a Brill semi-convertible staffed with a motorman and a roving conductor for a ride through the city.    Can you just imagine the thoughts that went through my mind?   Lancaster, Pennsylvania once had a fleet of those cars; they were built from about 1903 through the final order in 1907.   Because they would be two expensive to convert to one-man operation, the company bought a fleet of 41 Birney cars between 1920 and the early months of 1927.   The last two-man city cars, actually double-truck beasts, were retired in 1933.   Then the Birneys were replaced by ACF and ACF-Brill buses between 1939 and 1947.   And those buses from Philadelphia were replaced by GM buses beginning in the 1950s.   And the GM fleet was replaced by an all-new fleet funded by UMTA in the early 1970 and built by Twin Coach.   So by 1995, Lancaster's four wheel semi-convertibles had been replaced by four different sets of new vehicles … but in Oporto those ancient beasts were still running because the nation had no money for anything newer.   

Since I was in Oporto, using money from other nations in the EU, that area built a new light rail system.  In this Wikipedia item you can click on the picture of the light rail train on the bridge to expand it.   You can also look at some you tube videos of the metro and the older lines.   

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porto

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJtBCdSKxG4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYYxlHTmANk&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojvezlZV5OY&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJY__jAkxy8&feature=relmfu


And Sintra, outside of Lisbon, which was shutdown in 1995, is running again…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW0_WU1lSR4