Independent public transport, cycling and walking news & comment. Supporting all forms of moving towards a more environmentally sound NZ

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

The Genuine Article - sort of!

Even though I slag off at our local city and transit authorities I am ever mindful I live in a beautiful wee city. Remarkably it is still full of a reasonably large number of heritage buildings and even a [re-created] circuit of tram tracks around the city central areas,  with beautifully restored original trams from Christchurch itself, and other restored trams from Dunedin (350km south) and Melbourne, Australia.  In some cases these trams date back over 100 years.   Murphy's law applies here! I was trying to get a good photograph of one our iconic 1990s Designline gas/electric shuttle buses and a tram went past and I thought "Everyone photographs the trams, how cliche!" [and then remembering I had a digital camera so extra photos cost nothing/can be eliminated!] I thought what the hell".  As it turns out that I love this photo. Even so,  it is a little bit fake - we are only a provincial city with about a dozen or so higher rise buildings - by chance two line up behind this old 19th century Dunedin tram at the same moment, giving us a big city gravitas we don't quite really have! However we do have lots of elegance, that is something we do well, in a thousand ways big and small. This tram (originally ran in Dunedin, on two axles - predates bogies) was originally restored at Ferrymead Park, but is now leased to the city tramway system.

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