Trams - Belgium: books - history, types and technology

Belgium's Trams and Trolleybuses

Like most European countries, Belgium's main towns and cities developed their own tramway networks. Those that survive today include Brussels, Gent, Antwerpen and Charleroi.
In the 1960s both French-speaking Liège and Verviers lost their tramways, though there is a desire in Liège to see it return. In addition to the city systems, there was a rural network of mainly metre gauge tramways throughout the country known as the Vicinal.

Tony Martens, though born in Belgium, lived in the UK for most of his life, but started revisiting the country in the 1960s, photographing most of the surviving operations.
John Law's first visit to the country was in 1971, accompanying Tony in Brussels, where the last of the Vicinal routes were still operating and four-wheeled trams were running on the city streets. John has been returning to Belgium on a regular basis ever since.

Sadly, Tony Martens passed away in early 2019. Fortunately, John Law was able to gain access to Tony's slide collection and, along with his own photographic work, has tapped into this archive to bring you a photographic history of Belgium's trams and trolleybuses from the mid-1960s to the present day.

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Tramways de Flandre : Anvers, Gand, La côte (Années 1960)

After two works devoted to the tramways of Wallonia and Brussels, the author here discusses the tramways of the two major cities of Flanders (Antwerp and Ghent) as well as those of the coast.
These networks are still very active, after having been deeply modernized. The unpublished photographs of the author taken at this time show the path taken and also the changes in the urban environment in which the tramway remains a familiar element of daily life.

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Tramways de Wallonie - Années 1960 : Liège, Verviers, Charleroi

In the early 1960s, the electric tramway was present three cities in Wallonia: Liège, Verviers and Charleroi). Today, although the tram has disappeared from the streets of Verviers, it is still active in other cities after having been extensively modernized.
The author evokes these tramways so characteristic of a country that was one of the cradles of the railway industry at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
The period photographs taken by the author, all unpublished, also show how much the urban environment has changed over the past half-century.

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Tramways de Bruxelles - Années 1960

In the early 1960s, the electric tramway was present in the Belgian capital, but also in Flanders, particularly in Antwerp and Ghent. In addition, there were numerous local tramway lines around Brussels and Antwerp, as well as on the coast, between La Panne and Knokke.

The author evokes in this volume the Brussels tramways so characteristic of a country that was one of the cradles of the railway industry at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The author's period photographs, all unpublished, also show how much the urban environment has changed over the past half-century.

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