[murphaph]

I have been to Charleroi (it's a large town in Belgium) a couple of times before cheap flights were available from Dublin to Cologne. I used to get Ryanair flights to Charleroi and go on with the Thalys which was cheap back then.

Anyway, I always remember looking at their strange pre-metro system and thinking about it this evening it struck me that Charleroi built a system it didn't actually need while Dublin continually fails to build a similar system that is desperately needed. Strange world.

I found a cool thread on Skyscrapercity with some great pics of the never opened stretch of line, complete with (now vandalised stations) and illuminated signals! These signals have been presumably switched on for over 20 years, despite no trams ever having passed them. What a waste of electricity!

All in all, quite a fascinating little system.

[corktina]

the same situation exists uin Edinburgh I believe where the new tram, system has been cut back to run only as far as Haymrket and wont be reaching Waverley now. Bit of a white elephant by all accounts, going from relatively nowhere to somewhere not very handy.

[MYOB]

They've rowed back on that and it'll go to Waverly again. Scottish Govt. were going to withdraw their funding if they didn't go at least that far.

Waverly is a significant pull back from where it should have ended.

[Victor]

There was an article in Tramways & Urban Transit, earlier this year.

I got the impression that it was very much a vanity project. Where as the Walloon region was the more prosperous part of Belgium, that is no longer true.

[murphaph]

Originally Posted by Victor

There was an article in Tramways & Urban Transit, earlier this year.

I got the impression that it was very much a vanity project. Where as the Walloon region was the more prosperous part of Belgium, that is no longer true.

I get the same impression. Much of the system appears to run through extremely low density housing or green fields in the case of the western side of the network.

I imagine the density was even lower when it was built. It is a fascinating thing though. I imagine if they could stump up the cash to convert it to driverless operation, the long unopened branch to Chatelet could cover its operational costs, or close enough. Walloon is skint however, so this won't be happening any time soon.

I wonder why they run units "wrong side" on the Gilly branch (and were to do the same on the Chatelet branch). I haven't been able to figure that out.