The Historical Tram Cars on Line 42

Hop on!

Seven years older is the 349 motorized car. It represents the first update of the previous production series of the "200" models, and although only eleven were produced, it's represented in our historical fleet. Built in 1915, it had one-piece sliding doors and electromagnetic rail brakes. The most famous Czech composer of military marches, Julius Fučík, and the author of immortal film melodies, Jaroslav Ježek, would have heard their gentle screeching. The music of the spheres resounds through Prague.

 

 

The 351 motorized car dates from World War I - 1915. It was produced in the Ringhoffer factory in Prague's Smíchov district and began plying the streets of Prague that same year. Its benches were still wooden; František Ženíšek, the creator of the first curtain of the National Theatre, could have sat on them. Take a ride through Prague, a living theatre of history.

Car 412 from 1920 is interesting because it's from the first series of Prague trams produced in independent Czechoslovakia! It was the first tram to have doors and nine windows along the sides. If the eminent Czech builder Václav Havel had taken the tram, he could have ridden past his newly completed masterpiece of late Art Nouveau architecture, the Lucerna Palace. Line 42 will show you the greatest pearls of Prague architecture.

 

 

The four-axle T2 is another unique car in Prague - there were only two of them in the whole city (one is now in the Public Transport Museum in Střešovice). On the nostalgic line 42, however, we operate the MV 6003 car, originally built in 1958 for the city of Ostrava. Maybe the local singer Věra Špinarová used it. Her biggest hit begins in Czech with the words: “The day is hidden in the rose.” When dusk falls on Prague and your day is hidden in the rose, you’ll have something to remember.

The T3 tram with the designation MV 6102 is the oldest preserved car of this type in the world. It was built in 1962 and its leatherette seats under sliding ventilation windows were probably occupied by the Czech actor František Černý, who inimitably portrayed an alchemist in aa1950s film. Sadly, he did not invent the elixir of youth; he died at only 58 years of age. But the MV 6102 can transport you sixty years into the past.

The last representative of the fleet serving the nostalgic line 42 is the MV 5602; it recalls the tradition of sightseeing trams, which dates to the period before the First World War. This car with the marigold symbol was converted for sightseeing purposes from a decommissioned T3 tram in 1989. It glided along the silver ribbons of the city’s tram tracks for a quarter of a century, with such notables as the poet Václav Hravě, author of the immortal poems Love is like a Vespers, occupying its laminate seats. And love, this is Prague, the magical city on the Vltava River.

The legendary K2 articulated tram, manufactured in 1977 at ČKD Tatra Praha, served for over 30 years in Bratislava to train future tram drivers – a job that many dreamed of. Tram drivers included French actor Jean Lefebvre (Fougass from the series The Gendarmes of St Tropez) and American screenwriter Anthony Zuiker (CSI: Las Vegas). Hop aboard the tram that takes people to their dreams.

 

Route:

Dlabačov – Pohořelec – Brusnice – Pražský hrad – Královský letohrádek – Malostranská – Právnická fakulta – Čechův most – Dlouhá třída – Náměstí Republiky – Masarykovo nádraží – Jindřišská – Václavské náměstí – Vodičkova – Lazarská – Národní třída – Národní divadlo – Újezd – Hellichova – Malostranské náměstí – Malostranská – Královský letohrádek – Pražský hrad – Brusnice – Pohořelec – Dlabačov

 

More at www.prague.eu/tram42