Latvian Trams 2 Daugavpils & Liepaja

Daugavpils is the second largest city in Latvia. It is situated some 200 km south east of the capital Riga, of which the trams and trolleybuses were featured in our previous programme. Electric trams began running as late as 1946, shortly after the Baltic republic was incorporated into the Soviet Union. There are just three tram lines and the tram fleet at the time of filming, in May 2017, consisted of the older style Russian built Ust-Katav (UKVZ) KTM-5 cars, eight new low-floor 71-623 single-section cars as well as four new 71-631 three-section cars from this Russian manufacturer. There is also a small fleet of Tatra T3D trams that were acquired from Schwerin in Germany. Daugavpils trams still operate with trolley poles. Our filming covers the entire tram network. We also take a brief look in at the bus station and see a brand new Solaris Urbino 12 100% electric bus passing through. We conclude our visit with some still photographs taken by Steve Kelly on a journey he made to the city in 2007.