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Stuttgart Tram Museum
Straßenbahmuseum Stuttgart
Stuttgart Tram Museum
Bad Canstatt, Stuttgart, Germany
ABOVE: Meter-gauge trams in the Stuttgart Tram
Museum, which occupies a former streetcar depot in Stuttgart's Bad Canstatt
district.
By
Durant Imboden
Stuttgart
and Straßenbahn share more than an initial consonant: Stuttgart was the
first German city with a streetcar network, thanks to the introduction of
horsedrawn trolleys in 1868. A cogwheel railway opened in 1884, and in 1891,
Stuttgart followed Berlin and Hamburg by introducing the third electric tram
system in Germany.
Since then, the city's streetcar network has
continued to flourish, to the point where the entire meter-gauge system was
replaced by a modern standard-gauge network in December, 2007. (Stuttgart's
willingness to invest in public transit is all the more impressive for taking
place in the headquarters city of two car companies.)
 Stuttgart
is a city that takes pride in its industrial history, and the
Straßenbahnmuseum Stuttgart
or Stuttgart Tram Museum has an
extensive collection of trams, buses, and
related objects that date back nearly 150 years.
The museum's parent organization,
Stuttgarter Historische
Straßenbahnen e.V., works closely with the local
SSB transit authority. The SSB, in turn,
provides the museum with 3,000 square meters of exhibition space at a former
streetcar barn in the district of Bad Canstatt.
The museum has more than 60 restored trams
and other vehicles, and it runs excursions on meter-gauge tracks that have been
laid between the city's new standard-gauge tram lines.
ABOVE: A panoramic glimpse of the museum's
collection, which includes more than 60 streetcars and other vehicles.
Visitor information
The last time we checked, the museum was open Wednesdays and
Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and on Sundays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., with a
few exceptions (such as Christmas and New Year's Day) and rare special openings.
For up-to-date information on opening hours and ticket prices in German, see the
Streetcar
Museum Web site.
Tram excursions
On Sundays, the museum runs "old-timer trips" on vintage
streetcars and buses. For details, click the link above and see the "Oldtimerfahrten
mit der Linie 23" schedule and ticket prices.
Next page:
More photos
About the author:
 Durant Imboden
is a professional travel writer, book author, and editor who focuses on European
cities and transportation.
After 4-1/2 years of covering European travel topics for About.com, Durant and
Cheryl Imboden co-founded Europe for Visitors (now including Germany for
Visitors) in
2001. The
site has earned "Best of the Web" honors from Forbes and The
Washington Post.
For more information, see
About
Europe for Visitors,
press clippings, and
reader
testimonials.
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"Best
of the Web" - Washington Post
