What is the oldest tram in Europe?

Europe's very first public tramway was opened in the Wirral town of Birkenhead in August 1860 and ran four horse drawn public service routes until the service was electrified in 1901. The service eventually ceased operation in 1937 in favour of petrol driven buses.



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In Britain, the Volk's Electric Railway was opened in 1883 in Brighton. This two kilometer line, re-gauged to 2 feet 9 inches (840 mm) in 1884, remains in service to this day, and is the oldest operating electric tramway in the world.

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The 10 largest tram networks in the world
  1. Melbourne, Australia: 250km.
  2. St. ...
  3. Berlin, Germany: 193km. ...
  4. Moscow, Russia: 182km. ...
  5. Milan, Italy: 181.8 km. ...
  6. Katowice (upper Silesia), Poland: 178km. ...
  7. Vienna, Austria: 176.9km. ...
  8. Budapest, Hungary: 174km. ...


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Lyon, France Lyon won the gold for being home to the best performing tram system in large cities across the world.

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Chicago at one time did claim to have the largest streetcar system in the world, with a fleet of over 3,200 passenger cars and over 1,000 miles of track – a claim backed up in several sources we found. It all started in 1859 with a horse-drawn car running along a single rail track down State Street.

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The advent of personal motor vehicles and the improvements in motorized buses caused the rapid disappearance of the tram from most western and Asian countries by the end of the 1950s (for example the first major UK city to completely abandon its trams was Manchester by January 1949).

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Services were withdrawn earlier than most other British cities to be replaced by trolleybus and motor buses. Trams did not return to the city until the modern light-rail system Manchester Metrolink opened in 1992.

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What really killed the streetcar: gridlock and artificially low fares. The decline of the streetcar after World War I — when cars began to arrive on city streets — is often cast as a simple choice made by consumers. As a Smithsonian exhibition puts it, Americans chose another alternative — the automobile.

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It was because of the introduction of the private automobile and cheap gasoline in the US. Cities began to concentrate on building freeway systems for cars and dismantling their streetcar systems as relics of the past.

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If you've been on a streetcar in San Francisco or a trolley in Philadelphia, you've ridden a tram. The word tram was originally a Scottish term for the wagons that are used in coal mines, stemming from a Middle Flemish word meaning rung or handle of a barrow.

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China: China has the world's largest railway network, with over 146,000 kilometers of track, including a high-speed rail network that is the longest and most extensive in the world. United States: The United States has the world's second-largest railway network, with over 226,000 kilometers of track.

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