Jon Searles' photos with the keyword: 5002

This is maybe my first good color shot of this tram, #5002, which is the best-preserved Tatra T1 in Prague. It was also the second T1 produced, after DPP #5001. It's also the one that runs well enough to be used for charters, special occasions, and sometimes historical tram service #91, although that's a rare occurance. Normally, it only works service #91 on November 17th, the anniversary of the Velvet Revolution. The Tatra T1 is a Communist-era design, being the first tram design used in Prague with two modern four-wheel bogies, as opposed to having four wheels suspended directly from the frame. Introduced in 1952 and produced until 1958, these trams were based on the famous American PCC cars of the 1930's, although the subsequent T2 class (produced 1955-1958) looks visually more like a PCC.

Here's more of a closeup shot of #5002. The commotion over to the left is in an arcade of sorts which contains the memorial to November 17th and the Velvet Revolution. The Velvet Revolution was a gradual process, of course, and it didn't begin or end on November 17th, 1989, but in Prague November 17th was when students held a demonstration on roughly this spot, which the police broke up with violence. At the time a death was reported, which rumour subsequently escalated, in the public perception, into a "massacre," which resulted in weeks of demonstrations, which may have involved as many as 500,000 people. The irony is that the rumor of the dead student was disseminated by the StB, the Communist secret police. A five-hour general strike on November 27th may have involved more, however, as the population of Czechoslovakia at that time was in excess of 15 million. On the 28th, the Communist government, rather than carrying out a real massacre on the model of Tianamen Square, instead decided to announce their resignation, which took effect on December 10th. The interim government shared power between Communists and non-Communists until an election could be called in June of 1990. An interesting side note was that this interim government included Alexander Dubcek, the former Communist president who provoked the 1968 Soviet invasion with his liberal policies. The 1990 election resulted in Vaclav Havel, a playwright and founding member of Carta 77 (the most prominent organization to oppose the Communist regime), being elected the new president.

#5002 is the second-oldest Tatra tram still in the DPP fleet, and it is now only used on the historic tram service, #91 from Depo Stresovice-Vystaviste. Even on this service, it usually doesn't work except for on November 17th, the anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, which is also usually the last day of operations for #91 before the winter break. I was very, very lucky to be in the right place at the right time to get this, as I only have two other photos, both of them horrible, of this tram in service. This photo, also, was nearly a failure, as my Ikoflex was set wrong. I was in such a rush to get the shot that in my haste I pointed my light meter at the sky without even realising it, and as such I barely underexposed. I talked to a photo student, though, who was able to clean up the shot in the full version of Adobe Photoshop (on a high-end computer with a high-end 4000 dpi Nikon negative scanner), and I worked on it a little bit, too, and now I think it looks alright.