In Moscow, the birthday of the Moscow tram was celebrated with a parade of retro equipment. It turned 125 years old. On the occasion of the celebration, those wagons that worked in the city in different years passed through the old streets of Moscow in a column.
The Moscow tram system began to take shape back in 1872, when the first horse-drawn railway line was built for the Polytechnic Exhibition, held in Moscow in honour of the 25th anniversary of the reign of Alexander II and the 200th anniversary of Peter I. At that time, it was already a well-known transport abroad. The horse-drawn carriage was a wagon with benches based on a two-axle trolley, which was pulled by a team of two horses along a five-foot (1525 mm) track.
However, the first electric tram in Moscow was launched on April 6, 1899. The first route ran from Butyrskaya Zastava to Petrovsky Park.
The apogee of the development of the tram network in Moscow was the beginning of the 1930s, when it covered both rings (Boulevard and Garden) By this time, the tram had become the main Moscow transport. The popularity of the tram began to decline after the appearance of another type of urban transport in the city – the trolleybus. Its main advantages were mobility and the absence of the need to lay and maintain rails in urban conditions. After the active construction of the metro began in the 1950s, the tram finally lost its importance, but it still remained one of the most favourite modes of transport among Muscovites. The tram was often filmed in Soviet films, and it is often mentioned in the songs of various musical groups of the Soviet era.
The rolling stock of the retro parade in honour of the 125th anniversary of the Moscow tram turned out to be unique. The following models took part in it:
Wagon "F" No. 164 – produced in 1908 at the Mytishchi Plant. Tram cars "F" reached speeds of up to 40 km/h and accommodated 19 seated passengers on wooden benches. These trams operated in Moscow until the 1960s.
Tram "KM" No. 2170 – produced in 1930 at the Kolomna plant. In 1979, he starred in the cult film "The Meeting Place cannot be changed", In addition, he also starred in other famous Soviet films such as "Cold Summer of the Fifty-third" and "Pokrovsky Gate"
Tram "KTM-1" No. 0002 – Produced in 1947 at the Ust-Katavsky car Building plant. It is one of nine surviving trams
Tram "MTV-82" No. 1278 – produced in 1948 at the Tushinsky Machine-building Plant.
RVZ-6 tram No. 222 was produced in 1965 at the Riga Car Building Plant.
Tatra T2SU tram No. 378 – produced in 1960 at the ČKD factory. He was nicknamed the "one-eyed Czech" for his unique style.
Tatra T3SU tram No. 481 - produced in 1970 at the ČKD factory. Until recently, this model was a symbol of Moscow tram traffic. The last copies of these trams in the city were removed from the route in 2021. They were replaced by modern trams of Vityaz-M's own production.
