Jon Searles' photos with the keyword: Podbaba

I spent a lot of time also in 2009 photographing the tram traffic in and out of Podbaba, and in addition, the massive disruption caused by the scandalous Tunnel Blanka project ensured that the usual tram #8 wasn't the service terminating in Podbaba, as the reorganization of the routes meant that tram service #20 covered it instead. I also got to bash and observe most of the new Skoda 14t fleet, as by 2009 all of them had been delivered. This is #9170, the last of the fleet, as the next order will be for the newer and boxier Skoda 15t model.

Here's another shot of a 14t I don't think I've photographed before, #9165, parked at Podbaba.

The passenger cabin on a training T3 is also non-standard. For one thing, the digital destination boards are facing inward, so that instructors can tell if the driver has set them correctly. They're invisible from the outside, where they always indicate that the tram is a trainer. Another non-standard feature is the partition one quarter of the way back, and I haven't been able to figure out the purpose for this. In the front quarter of the cabin, however, the tables serve the obvious purpose of providing office space for the instructors. In the read three quarters, with the exception of the additional table that you can see on the left, the seating is more or less standard, for whatever purpose.

On the ceiling of the cab, you can see one of the rearview mirrors (on the lower right, partly cropped, the ventilation control (I think), on the far right, and the pantograph control on the upper left (for raising and lowering the pantograph). The pantograph control looks like a bell control, but it isn't, of course. The bell is controlled by a pushbutton on the control desk.

One odd feature of Tatra trams is that they have an accelerator and brake pedal like a bus, instead of the traditional rail vehicle controls of a throttle and a few brake levers. Because 5525 is a training tram, however, the instructor gets his/her own brake pedal, seen on the right. The right seat is also a trainer-only feature, as a standard T3 only has the driver's seat in the cab.

This was my technically better shot, showing that 5525 is a fully rebuilt T3 with a digital speedometer.

After taking the front shot, I shot this through the driver's side window, getting a surprisingly artistic shot for a cameraphone, I think. Seeing what I was doing, the instructor unexpectedly invited me into the tram to get a (technically) better shot, but I kept this one anyway.

In Radlicka, I regularly see training Tatra T3 training trams, and this one, #5525, was one that I didn't have too many photos of yet.

I've been gradually trying to photograph the whole roster of Skoda 14t's, and 9169 was one of the most recent ones I got, sitting in Podbaba.

I first took photos of 9111 when it was relatively new in 2006. This one, the prototype, had been delivered for testing in 2005, with 9112 soon to follow, and I managed to witness but not photograph the testing. It was in 2006 when production fully got underway, and the initial order for 20 trams was quickly expanded to 21, and then to 43. It has since been expanded still further to 60, numbered 9111-9170, although 9170 is expected to be the last. In any case, 9111 was the first, and when I first photographed it the original standard silver paint (for the 14t's) was still on it. Now it's been repainted into an advertising livery for Komercni Banka, with some other 14t's also being turned into advertising trams.

This is the Crown Plaza Hotel, based on the Seven Sisters complex in Moscow. This hotel, originally the Hotel Druzba, was built in 1952-1954 under the supervision of Alexej Cepicka, and was decorated with Communist murals, which you can see in the red striping just below the roofline.

I had two takes of this one, and originally I was going to post them both...until I realised how redundant that was, so I posted the second one.

I've been taking so many tram photos in Podbaba that it's been a bit hard sorting through them. I picked this one more or less at random.