Same in Germany, and I suppose other countries. Connections to the railway network were standard and a necessity back in the day and then cut back. Also cargo trams are not a totally new idea, in the past a lot of tram networks would carry freight, the decline seems to start in the 50s.
that factory in the city is a prestige showroom with consumer pickup center, the production itself was a gimmick. the real shame is that every dense inner city has multiple large objects with a constant flow of bulk cargo (shopping centers, markets, post offices, recycling/garbage collection, etc) and even here in Dresden, where we already have the trams and its loading station with railway connection, noone tries to connect that with the massive flow of goods going into the congested areas. This cargo tram itself was just a gimmick, to sell this idiotic inner city car factory to people ... absolutely wasted potential and just a reminder that noone in charge has a working brain.
Toby the tram was based on rolling stock of the Wisbech railway, basically a potato tramway. Many farmers also bought up narrow gauge trench rail for use on their farms and the branch lines would pick up from sidings near fields I'm sure it would have been a joy to see, multigauge monomodal agricultural rail.
Fun fact about Dresden's trams: It has a track gague of 1450mm, a whopping 15mm wider than standard gague. As far as I can tell, this gague is unique to Dresden, and I couldn't find out why they have it. Even more bizarrely, Leipzig, the other big city in Saxony and just over 100km away from Dresden, uses 1458mm gague for its trams, which is also one of a kind.
@@robertheinrich2994 But 900mm is one of the more standard gauges, on the other hand I bit wonder why Linz does not use something like Cape or metre gauge as those would be closer to original horse drawn railway that had ran from Č. Budějovice to Linz and further to Gmunden.
In Dresden and in Leipzig it has to do with how the rails for the old horse drawn tram were made. To allow for paving between the rails, some towns decided to mount a side rail on each rail to keep a gap open for the tram wheel flange. This caused some problems because when the gap was too wide, wheels of carts could get stuck, and if it was too narrow, horseshoes would. Dresden and Leipzig decided to have special rails made for them where the inner rail for the pavement was already forged into the rail head by having the head split by a groove, hence the gap would always be constant and not endanger cart wheels and horseshoes. But when using standard sleepers, this caused the gauge of the rail to be slightly wider, because the remaining working head of the rail was now narrower and slightly offset. Dresden and Leipzig had different suppliers for their rails, hence they had slightly different head geometry, causing the Dresden gauge to be 1450 mm (+15 mm) and the Leipzig gauge to be 1458 mm (+ 23 mm).
Interesting video, but I needed the subtitles to understand German bits (my native language). The thing in Zürich is just called "Cargo tram", I don't know where you got the "Fahrpläne" from, that just means "timetables". It also doesn't operate daily. It usually runs from Monday to Thursday and then about every other Friday and Saturday. It's a really cool system though. The tram runs two services, one for large items (Sperrgut, I don't know the English word) and one for electrical and electronic waste. There are several pick-up points across the network that get served about once a month by both services (so it visits all the locations about twice a week, either with one or the other service). The tram is parked at the recycling plant at Werdhölzli and drives to the pick-up point of the day, stays there for a few hours, people bring their trash and then it returns. Sadly, the service is supposed to be discontinued by the end of 2024 (I think) and replaced by some boring lorries. They're doing some rebuilding with the recycling infrastructure and the tram in use, Xe 4/4 1922 is a rebuilt tram from the 1940s, not getting any younger.
I moved to Dresden in 2019 from Australia just before Covid. I remember seeing the CarGoTram running around the city streets for the first time and thinking "what the hell" because I had only only really seen trams in Melbourne and Sydney before I thought maybe it was a normal thing in Germany.
Using a purportedly obsolete electric-powered tram to transport parts for the gas-guzzling Phaeton... is pretty ironic. Got me thinking about the many British towns that once had electric tram systems, all ripped out in the name of 'progress'.
and even more ironic: a few years later, a party leader in austria, whose party is famous for being anti-immigrants and doesn't believe in climate change, managed to unalive himself in a phaeton (for the metrically challenged, he was going over 100 mph on a road that did not support it). rest in pieces, jörg haider.
@@Tobi-ln9xr having lived through the 90s, I can assure you we had more pixels than this available. I’m not having a go at Ruairidh. Just amused how bad it is.
@@KirkNorthropif this is a digital recording or digitized, I'm sure you can't provide any privately owned footage with more pixels. I used to make films with my buddies in the early 2000s. Mpeg1 is a beach but it was the standard of free video compression. Surely that asked some dude to archive the footage and he used this codec because the only free alternative was uncompressed avi which took about a whole CD for not even 10 min of footage
Fun fact: The Concept of a goods Tram wasn't a new one back then, Trams networks used to carry goods since the nuremberg tram carried goods from 1882 up until 1945. Also many other Tram networks, especially in the european room used to carry goods.
It's only viable though on routine routes of reasonable volume. For everything else diesel Lorries are still required. (electric Lorries having been proven a scam, over & over again)
Oh man. This concept should be used more often for moving cargo, mail and even equipment and waste in cities with tram networks ngl. This example is a good one one if you ask me.
Unfortunately, VW scraped the Cargo Tram. Which technically should lose them the allowance to use the Dresden Factory. Since contractually, the only reason why they were allowed to build and use the Factory was the Cargo Tram.
They just started testing Cargo Tram system in Frankfurt again. Currently using older trams with seats still inside. Couple years ago they tested normal trams with cargobike containers from Onomotion
Saint-Petersburg had a freight tram system between 1914 and 2002. It played a major role in the city's defence during the Nazi siege. Nowadays most people only know of its existence from its role in the 1997 crime drama film "Brother" that is a cult classic in Russia.
It was a really cool proof of concept, and the factory equipment itself was pretty high tech. It's a shame the trams were used exclusively for the production of cars, and at the same time it's a shame that they're replaced with hydrogen powered trucks. Something related to cargo trams is NYC MTA's garbage trains, using subway metro cars and open carriages to convey bags of trash.
I worked for years fixing my hometown Skoda trolley or streetcars. Portland, Oregon. Within 10 years all of the trolleys lost its new luster and reliability. Every week one of streetcars were involved in an accident. Car drivers not paying attention. Of the topic story- City of Portland, behind Skoda’s back, let local manufacture come and copy most of the parts of the Skoda trolley. Basically illegally building a copy of the trolley cheaper. When Skoda found out they left took parts support and repair manuals with them. It was big mistake, costing taxpayers millions. The trolley manufacture built had no running software. It sat over 5 years, while engineers tried get it running. Finally when was ready. The operating system was ten years behind.
Similiar thing happened decades ago when Czech Tratra T1 was send to one city in Poland (not remembering which at moment) and local tram manufacturer Konstal reverse ingeneer it into it´s own tram
cargo trams are such a nice thing to have, the joke is that they almost never were used for the regular cargo requirments of a packed city struggling with congestion. Instead its most often just for a dim prestige project which never were about efficiency (like an inner city car factory/show room). If these cargo trams had been used for essential needs which dont fluctuate with trends/singular company business they would have been a success. Every dense city has garbage/recycling collection points, post offices, huge shopping centers/markets with a constant flow of bulk goods and so on ... these should have been the objects utilizing cargo trams. Yet even here in Dresden, where we already have the trams and a loading station far enough off with rail and road connection, noone even tries to give our inner city objects with cargo demand a tram loading station so that the number of trucks having to enter the inner city could be cut down in meaningful ways. just shameful how poorly city planners think things through.
Glasgow's (first generation) tramways were built to 4'-7¾" gauge, specifically to permit standard gauge wagons to access that once extensive network. The reason for that odd gauge being that railway flanges are markedly deeper than those of trams, the upshot being it was the flanges of the railway wagons which ran in the grooves of the tramway. The feature WAS employed in a very limited capacity, over a short section of one route. Obviously, no gauge widening was possible on curves (one of the big differences between tram and railway PW), which is why trams were so damnably slow (and usually noisy) around curves. The ex-Glasgow trams working at Crich (Derbyshire) have been re-gauged to the standard 4'-8½", but are no less stunning for that. This paragraph has been a shameless plug for the National Tramway Museum ... do please check their website and prepare to be amazed !!!
Yeah plus it had within it, apparently, the seeds of its own demise, or indeed that of the pre-driverless car era we are about to enter, didn't it? The whole factory automated and all that? Wow. Another great vid from Ruairidh.
Cargo trams are a great idea in theory, and can work in limited cases as shown here... but anyone with more than a rudimentary understanding of how logistics works (or how tram networks function) will be able to tell you how difficult and disruptive it would be for widespread adoption. Even in cities with huge tram networks like Prague, for things like garbage collection, you would still need a large fleet of regular garbage trucks for the majority of streets that aren't on the tram network. Using tramways for cargo is a nice idea, but how many people would be happy with a half-hour gap in their tram timetable because that's when the Tesco Metro gets their cargo tram delivery? This urbanist utopian idea of everything being delivered by tram or quadricycle is just a pipedream, outside of a few edge cases in places like Switzerland.
@@Eric_Hunt194 trucks disrupt tram networks just the same in dense cities where both share the same (cross)roads, and noone was talking about trams collecting garbage or roadside shops ... I refered to regular bulk loads going from and to larger objects in the inner city, not trams becoming the last mile delivery like the Amazon truck or bread delivery for a shop. Every larger city has larger objects in its dense center where a large number of trucks stop every day to drop off or take on cargo. So these loading bays are usually rather large to also accomandate multiple trucks at once. Such objects could have the point of delivery offsite, replacing its spacious truck loading bays and turning points with a tram stop (which still could double up for the occasional truck like tram stops do for busses) and then a cargo tram would only have to come when its filled up with deliveries from a large number of trucks. And such a trip wouldnt disrupt the regular passenger service of the trams, as stopping points would be off the regular line ofc. So there would be no tram waiting while your roadside supermarket is getting its bread, because thats not what a cargo tram would do. And no tram line service is so dense that they couldnt fit multiple cargo trams in between.
@@diedampfbrasse98 the issue is that cargo takes longer to load and unload compared to passengers, so if they're sharing tracks they'll get in the way. Cargo trams are a great idea for the niche cases where they will work, but they aren't suitable for such widespread adoption that they could eliminate LGVs (or LKWs, to use the German terminology)
I have heard about this in the past. It is bit sad that this system is no longer in operation, on the other hand I was one of a kind vehicle for single task - moving parts between two sites, so it was only natural that with changes in production, this system became obsolete. On the other hand it is bit pity that this concept did not became more widespread in Dresden as it could have been used for other purposes as well, but maybe the design was too limiting for other uses. I really can't see trash or gravel being transported in carriages that will within few hours be transporting delicate car parts or food. That would perhaps require something closer to train with two locomotives, than to EMU. In my opinion one of the greatest obstacle to more broader adoption of freight trams and freight metro is that there are currently no carriages that could easily operate on on tram networks and on standard railways. This means that goods have to be transloaded which results in delays and danger of the goods being damaged and at that point it is perhaps easier to send them by road. Sure, there would have to be some special tram locomotives build, but at the beginning maybe small shunter diesels or some refurbished old tram locomotives (one should be on display in Bratislava) could do the job until new one are designed. But we will still need some carriages that can negotiate tight curves (all the way down to some 25 metres) and that can fit through much smaller loading gauge, also they should be design with shipping containers in mind. Maybe then we will see return of the freight trams, but unless that is done, their role will be IMHO highly limited and most cities will not use them at all. Not even for transport of trash from collecting points to waste-to-energy plants and so on.
I mean, this comes from the same company that fooled the world about its "clean diesel" for over a decade. They got caught and swicthed to EVs hurriedly, and now even that market is collapsing too.
It's not really ironic, it's just exploiting an opportunity created by location. Similarly it isn't "ironic" that most car imports to the UK from continental Europe are done by train, it's just exploiting economies of scale. The alternative is 40 HGVs (and 40 drivers) which is slower and more costly.
Many cities in the US,had trolley freight operations,and also garbage trains! To name two very prominent systems,Philadelphia(PRT)had an extensive garbage disposal system,and Brooklyn(BRT),was also a heavy user! Flushing Meadows,the site of the 1939,and 1964 World's Fair was the old Corona Dump,and was/is filled land! A bit of hidden history,in plain sight! Thank you 😇 😊!
Freight trolleys are as old as the electric streetcar. Infact america had thousands of these freight motors trundling across it at one time from slower locomotive types to the boxes with trailers running highspeed across the mainlines of their interurbans. Heck at times they would even run on other systems. At times. Both loaded and just transfer. It was a freight motor like this that made the daring 200 mile trip solo from Trenton NJ winding along to Hershey PA..
Russia: Hold my beer *privatized everything (bus, tram, trolleybus, river transport) and literally everything just closed and turned into scrap and now we have only route taxis in most cities except non-privatized Moscow transport* Thats real, in my city we've got a bus in... 2022. After 20+ years of existence without ANY transport except taxi and route taxi.
@@Andrey_Gysev TBF, in Soviet times they kept the public transport ubiquitous. From '90s on began the major extinction. And the municipal transport is usually not privatized, just starved of paying passengers, goes decrepit and dies out.
@@u2bear377 Yes! I remember my grandma told me that there were a bus and a river bus to her very small village and neighbours from the city itself! Thats crazy to think rn! I remember i've seen tram rails back when i was 5 and thought what are they for and my ma told me that there was a massive tram network in my city back in soviet times... Our municipal transport went bankcupt forcefully and now we have only privatized transport.
The Touareg was introduced at a similar time already sharing the platform/factory with the Porsche Cayenne but Touareg had Diesel engines up to the V10 TDI and W12 petrol engine while the Cayennes had homegrown V6 and V8 engines with the topend option being the Turbo V8. However the Q7 was introduced three years after the Touareg. During that time they also offered a version of the Passat with a W8 engine (the only model that had this engine, they didn't take the V8 from the Audi S4) even offering Connolly Leather, however it failed with only 11 000 sold between 2001 and 2004. These were the Volkswagen Halo cars initiated by Ferdinand Piëch, at least the air conditioning went into the A8 D5 (also with these vent covers).
Phaeton was not really a failure. The Phaeton was designed for 2 reasons; to elevate the prestige of Volkswagen and to build a platform for the upcoming Bentley Continental GT and Flying Spur. VW made all their money back with the Phaeton in the success of later cars based on its platform like the Bentley Continentals and Porsche Panamera.
the A8 is not a success it only exists because there kind marque Audi wants to be is nothing takes serious without a limousine of that type BMW 7 series and any Mercedes S classes sell 10x better each
the A8 is not a success it only exists because the kind marque Audi wants to be is not taken seriously without a limousine of that type BMW 7 series and any Mercedes S classes sell 10x better each
@@TheImperfectGuy In Europe the A8 is a success. The A8 only sells 50% less units than the Mercedes S-Class and even surpasses 7-Series sales figures in some years. In the U.S. you guys don’t recognize the A8 as a legitimate competitor to those cars for some reason so you don’t buy them, but everywhere else the A8 sells very well.
This is a great idea, if you've got enough money to throw at it. From the sound of things, that tram had the cargo capacity of 3 trucks. But I bet it cost a lot more than 3 trucks to buy. And the track to connect the cargo zone of the factory to the main tram line was another additional cost on top of that. Sure, it probably cost less to operate (until it became old & needed excessive maintenance). But I bet the payback period for the added up-front cost was a few times longer than the lifespan of the tram. Now, if the idea were to catch on & cargo trams got built in the hundreds, instead of being bespoke, the cost would maybe be worth while. To achieve something like that, you'd need a descent sized country to initiate things with a nationwide plan to use cargo trams for something like waste transfer (what that Swiss tram mentioned at the end does). That will create some scale for manufacturer of the units pulling the cost downward.
Small pronunciation hint: German chs is pronounced x. In fact, many words, which in English are spelled with x, have an chs in German, like Achse - axle, Fuchs - fox, Füchsin - vixen, Wachs - wax, Flachs - flax, Sachsen - Saxony and similarly Sachsenring - Ring of Saxony. Chemnitz comes from Slavic kamen = stone, hence it is pronounced Kemnitz (in fact, a suburb of Dresden is called Kemnitz).
The Cargo-Tram truely is a loss for humanity, but it has to be said that the routes in Dresden had to be specially reinforced for the MUCH heavier Cargo-Tram. Additionally others have mentioned the weird gauge and space-profile of tracks used for Dresden's trams stopping cargo carriages to be sent around the city directly from normal gauge tracks.
Was the tack gauge really that big of a problem? Under certain conditions, like limited speed and section of tracks being equipped with guide rails, standard gauge boogies can operate on broad gauge track, that is further 70 mm wider than tram gauge in Dresden.
Imagine having this system connecting freight railroads and truck routes in the USA especially major cities especially NYC. Sending goods from Brooklyn, Manhattan, Bronx, Queens to NJ. Which can relief most of the traffic on its highway bridges and tunnels.
Yup. NYC used to have an extensive tram system (albeit for passengers), until the motorbike lobby put paid to it. Given NYC is infamous for refuse collection issues, I can imagine a cargo tram refuse variant would be really useful on routine high intensity collection routes.
Not really efficient on most large tram networks. 1. Almost every modern urban tram network has a number of bottleneck sections that usually operate at 95-100% capacity. Those determine the "room" for any cargo trams on the (rest of the) network, if there is any room at all, because... 2. Modern (large) urban tram networks usually have very low headways/very frequent service on their main sections. This means a cargo tram would need to adhere to these timetables, and it would need to be squeezed in between normal passenger trams. 3. A number of similar plans had cargo trams running at night. There is a reason a lot of networks do not operate at night (or only on a limited part of the network, or on weekends only) because this is generally when network maintenance is done.
An idea with potential certainly. Here in the UK I can see a refuse variant being ideal for town center refuse collection, to take up a large part of the work normally done by diesel bin lorries. (with bin lorries being freed up for smaller volume collections elsewhere)
Little pronunciation help - the "ch" in "Chemnitz" is actually pronounced the same way that an English speaker would say the "ch" in "chemistry". But even some Germans sometimes get it wrong if they are from other parts of the country. Just by looking at the letters of the word, it isn't obvious.And the proper pronunciation of he first part of the name "Sachsenring" is something that English speakers would likely hesitate about. It's very close to a word that I probably can't put in the comment, which s*cks... 😉 But there is nothing problematic about the word "Sachsen" in German, so don't worry. Interestingly, the City of Frankfurt am Main just concluded a 4 week long test for something that is related in concept. In a cooperation between their local tram operator VGF, a university (I think from Frankfurt directly) and Amazon, they used a type "Pt" tram car from 1978, which is only kept as an operating spare, to haul smaller Amazon deliveries from a point at the outskirts of the city to a mostly unused track loop next to the Frankfurt zoo. From where the cargo would be delivered to the customers via electric cargo bikes. Sure, this is not a purpose-built vehicle, and from the photos it looks like all the modifications they did was to put on a vinyl wrap advertising the project, but after all, this was just an experiment for a limited time. But from what I heard, it was successful and they are considering the idea to turn this into something more permanent.
Glasgow in the 1800s had sections of tram track in standard railway gauge, so cargo delivered to the city on flatbeds or cargo boxes could be moved to street level and moved to factories and shipyards with an electric-powered shunt. All the tram lines were torn up in the 50s and 60s in favour of diesel buses.
It's such a shame that 20 years ago companies and governments had more ambition to be eco-friendly and relieve the roads than nowadays - when we need it more than ever.
I find it ironic that various modes of transport, rail and tram, would contribute to either its demise in many countries; or reduction in use, by carrying parts for or complete cars that ultimately took passengers away from them… 🏴
I lived in Dresden until 2021 and I remember seeing these every now and then. I didn't know they stopped service, which is a shame. They should've kept going with them, as it's great marketing, especially for their new electric model.
The San Diego light rail system is a legitimate heavy rail freight railroad at night, connecting numerous industrial customers to the national rail network.
what scares me from the footage shown of the factory is any bright red/yellow barriers and gates on the factory floor. never even knew the Phaeton existed.
6:00 Your description of the Phaeton is completely inaccurate. Parts weren't transferred over from the Bentley Continental to build the Phaeton, the Bentley actually used alot of the Phaetons parts. The Phaeton came out 2 years sooner and was effectively a test bed for the Bentley Continental GT. I don't like how this narrative that the Phaeton is a just rebadged Bentley has become so pervasive; the later Continentals and Flying Spurs are rebadged Phaeton's, not the other way round. I also take issue with your statement that the Phaeton was merely on par with the Audi A8, the Phaeton was actually better in most aspects; and this is coming from an A8 owner. The Phaeton was more refined, more comfortable, higher quality and the cheaper vehicle. The Audi is more dynamic thanks to its aluminium architecture and stiffer suspension but not on par with the Phaeton when it comes to luxury. The Phaeton was better than even the 7-Series and S-Class when it came out; it was that good. Even Jeremy Clarkson admitted when it came out that it was the luxury car to buy.
So - short version - The laudable green transport component had been made from clapped out equipment built to obsolete design formulated decades earlier became unreliable, leading to it's being phased out just as the production line switched from ICE to EV production. There's a certain commonality with the penny-pinching bargain basement approach which has blighted UK industry since ..... for ever. I believe there is still a cargo tram service operating in one of the Swiss cities.
Trafford Park near Manchester had trains running through it until the early 2000s serving the Container Base and freight terminal. Then everybody lost interest. Oh and of course cost would have played a part. Still, Andy Burnham will be trying to get his paws on a few Billion, so you never know.
Meanwhile in England we have towns/cities like Frome (Froom), Leicester (Lester), Towcester (Toaster) and Wymondham (Wind-ham)... and Scotland goes one better with Milngavie (Mull-guy). The Welsh are awkward too, but at least their language makes phonetic sense once you learn it!
If it was that, not really defeating the point. No different to the shuttle trains in the Channel Tunnel or through the Alpine base tunnels, just on a smaller scale.
Perhaps they could introduce and fit out the existing tram cars as Restaurant cars as have appeared in other parts of the world...and transverse attractive areas of Dresden night and day. Would make an Interesting tourist attraction.
VW Phaeton: If I pay just about the same amount for a VW badged Bentley, then I prefer the Bentley. The entire disaster with the Phaeton was down to the badge. Back when I still did not like the Bentley Continental, I used to call those the Phaeton Coupe. To day I love the Continental and the Spur and my Mulsanne.
@@drstevenrey Wasn’t a VW badged Bentley the Continentals were Bentley badged Phaetons. The Phaeton came out 1 year earlier and the Continental only began development after the Phaeton project had been greenlit. That’s also why I love the Mulsanne so much; it’s completely independent from the Phaeton’s influence and still bears the old L-Series V8 that Bentley had been using for years. The Mulsanne is really the last proper Bentley in my eyes. Enjoy your Mulsanne, it’s the last of it's kind.
Wouldn't such a system be useful for carrying cargo to commercial areas and markets focused on walkability and public transit, thus removing the need for letting trucks in
The whole thing was a bit nuts from the car to the factory - effectively almost designing in inefficiency - the tram should never have existed as the factory should never have been separated. Bonkers! This was the sort of idea a wealthy company might create when flush with cash and notionally create a new ‘thing’
This factory was specifically build to show off, VW wanted to show it's customers that they could build premium cars. That is why it is in the middle of Dresden and mostly build from glass. Invited customers are able to take a look at most of the assembly process.
From the thumbnail i thought it's a tram on wheels and thought, no way that's efficient. You have my agreement. Let's move cargo on rails. However the biggest problem is still not this, but the cars. We should do everything we can to transition out of cars. Ban them, get alternatives for disabled people. That's what will fix congestion. The only traffic jam i've seen that contains trucks is out of city and a cargo tram wouldn't fix that.
1:42 Hah! Finally! ze German wins against the Engländer!! All those years of of taunting us with names like Leicester, Worcester and Edinburgh, we finally get our revenge!! while its written Chemnitz, its pronunced with a k like Kemnitz Muhahahahahaha No but very interesting video, thank you very much :)
I find this idea good. Trams, here in Switzerland as well, go past all the big shops and stores in the city. I would probably move the cargo at night. And it's not Sashen, it's Saksen and it is called Kemnits and not Shemnis. It's German, not English, get it. Stop ignorance on languages.
I Zurich we have some garbage transported by tram. I think running trams at night would disturb citizens, houses along the line vibrate, and there is a lot of noise.
@@gentuxable It isn´t like the trams would run every five minutes or so, just a few for the stores plus the normal night trams. But I thing that labour costs would be too high at night for it to be viable and delivering it during the day (without extra tracks) could disrupt passenger traffic.
whenever I see a video like this with an AI voiceover I’m not sure I can trust any of the information being presented, I’m sorry if you wrote this video yourself but the style just isn’t for me and I’m not sure that I’m learning anything (I really wish there was a video on this subject with an actual voiceover)
While this was just for some dumb VW factory , we couldve had this nationwide and had greatness , every city thriving and bustling , walkable everywhere with way more trams busses and no more HGV's , we were this || close to perfection 😭 So ein Scheißdreck ...
Probably the only tram that actually generated a profit. Public transit is so grossly unprofitable and inefficient for passenger traffic when cars are far more effective. This is why passenger trains and bus service is a pale shadow of itself
Agree completely. But yet fares are still monstrously expensive (looking at train travel in the UK). The issue is people dont see just how expensive it is to run, they just see the ticket price and assume they're making millions. In reality they're spending those millions at just as fast a rate
All manufacturing should be located by railways/tramways to keep lorries off the roads. In the UK we ripped up the railways though. Oooops.
Same in Germany, and I suppose other countries. Connections to the railway network were standard and a necessity back in the day and then cut back.
Also cargo trams are not a totally new idea, in the past a lot of tram networks would carry freight, the decline seems to start in the 50s.
Not all but I agree much as possible
that factory in the city is a prestige showroom with consumer pickup center, the production itself was a gimmick. the real shame is that every dense inner city has multiple large objects with a constant flow of bulk cargo (shopping centers, markets, post offices, recycling/garbage collection, etc) and even here in Dresden, where we already have the trams and its loading station with railway connection, noone tries to connect that with the massive flow of goods going into the congested areas.
This cargo tram itself was just a gimmick, to sell this idiotic inner city car factory to people ... absolutely wasted potential and just a reminder that noone in charge has a working brain.
ironically enough, the UK is a perfect example of why that could never work.
Your country invented the NIMBY, after all 😂
Toby the tram was based on rolling stock of the Wisbech railway, basically a potato tramway.
Many farmers also bought up narrow gauge trench rail for use on their farms and the branch lines would pick up from sidings near fields I'm sure it would have been a joy to see, multigauge monomodal agricultural rail.
"Cargo space?"
"No sir, CarGoTram"
？
@@6nem3ktumi It's a pun, car-go is spelt the same as cargo.
Fun fact about Dresden's trams: It has a track gague of 1450mm, a whopping 15mm wider than standard gague. As far as I can tell, this gague is unique to Dresden, and I couldn't find out why they have it. Even more bizarrely, Leipzig, the other big city in Saxony and just over 100km away from Dresden, uses 1458mm gague for its trams, which is also one of a kind.
on the other end of the spectrum is linz with 900mm tram gauge. that causes some problems because it is quite narrow.
@@robertheinrich2994 But 900mm is one of the more standard gauges, on the other hand I bit wonder why Linz does not use something like Cape or metre gauge as those would be closer to original horse drawn railway that had ran from Č. Budějovice to Linz and further to Gmunden.
@@MrToradragon they even regauged the pöstingbergbahn from meter to 900mm to just deal with one gauge and not two.
Milano, Roma, Torino and basically all Italian standard gauge trams also used 1445mm. The wider gauge is to make turning easier.
In Dresden and in Leipzig it has to do with how the rails for the old horse drawn tram were made. To allow for paving between the rails, some towns decided to mount a side rail on each rail to keep a gap open for the tram wheel flange. This caused some problems because when the gap was too wide, wheels of carts could get stuck, and if it was too narrow, horseshoes would. Dresden and Leipzig decided to have special rails made for them where the inner rail for the pavement was already forged into the rail head by having the head split by a groove, hence the gap would always be constant and not endanger cart wheels and horseshoes. But when using standard sleepers, this caused the gauge of the rail to be slightly wider, because the remaining working head of the rail was now narrower and slightly offset. Dresden and Leipzig had different suppliers for their rails, hence they had slightly different head geometry, causing the Dresden gauge to be 1450 mm (+15 mm) and the Leipzig gauge to be 1458 mm (+ 23 mm).
Interesting video, but I needed the subtitles to understand German bits (my native language).
The thing in Zürich is just called "Cargo tram", I don't know where you got the "Fahrpläne" from, that just means "timetables". It also doesn't operate daily. It usually runs from Monday to Thursday and then about every other Friday and Saturday. It's a really cool system though. The tram runs two services, one for large items (Sperrgut, I don't know the English word) and one for electrical and electronic waste. There are several pick-up points across the network that get served about once a month by both services (so it visits all the locations about twice a week, either with one or the other service). The tram is parked at the recycling plant at Werdhölzli and drives to the pick-up point of the day, stays there for a few hours, people bring their trash and then it returns.
Sadly, the service is supposed to be discontinued by the end of 2024 (I think) and replaced by some boring lorries. They're doing some rebuilding with the recycling infrastructure and the tram in use, Xe 4/4 1922 is a rebuilt tram from the 1940s, not getting any younger.
I moved to Dresden in 2019 from Australia just before Covid. I remember seeing the CarGoTram running around the city streets for the first time and thinking "what the hell" because I had only only really seen trams in Melbourne and Sydney before I thought maybe it was a normal thing in Germany.
Using a purportedly obsolete electric-powered tram to transport parts for the gas-guzzling Phaeton... is pretty ironic. Got me thinking about the many British towns that once had electric tram systems, all ripped out in the name of 'progress'.
and even more ironic: a few years later, a party leader in austria, whose party is famous for being anti-immigrants and doesn't believe in climate change, managed to unalive himself in a phaeton (for the metrically challenged, he was going over 100 mph on a road that did not support it).
rest in pieces, jörg haider.
@@robertheinrich2994 That's the one instance a Phaeton was actually useful. 🤣
Its what we in Germany call a freight train
@robertheinrich2994 ""mertrically challenged""
Nah: more like *those whom won WWII & put boots on the moon* 😂
@@jimtaylor294 NASA uses metric. this was a problem with SLS. the senate ordered 130t payload to LEO, and NASA understood metric ton.
Wow that PR footage of the factory didn’t have any pixels to spare, did it?
Kartoffelkamera
I mean the footage is from the 90s…
@@Tobi-ln9xr having lived through the 90s, I can assure you we had more pixels than this available.
I’m not having a go at Ruairidh. Just amused how bad it is.
@@KirkNorthropif this is a digital recording or digitized, I'm sure you can't provide any privately owned footage with more pixels. I used to make films with my buddies in the early 2000s. Mpeg1 is a beach but it was the standard of free video compression. Surely that asked some dude to archive the footage and he used this codec because the only free alternative was uncompressed avi which took about a whole CD for not even 10 min of footage
Fun fact: The Concept of a goods Tram wasn't a new one back then, Trams networks used to carry goods since the nuremberg tram carried goods from 1882 up until 1945. Also many other Tram networks, especially in the european room used to carry goods.
What an excellent idea! Get diesel lorries off the streets! Thank you for making this.
It got retired a few years ago due to VW moving focus to a different plant which now requires lorries again.
That doesn't discredit the idea though @@lillywho
It's only viable though on routine routes of reasonable volume. For everything else diesel Lorries are still required.
(electric Lorries having been proven a scam, over & over again)
@@jimtaylor294 I wonder if methane trucks are viable?
Oh man. This concept should be used more often for moving cargo, mail and even equipment and waste in cities with tram networks ngl. This example is a good one one if you ask me.
Unfortunately, VW scraped the Cargo Tram. Which technically should lose them the allowance to use the Dresden Factory. Since contractually, the only reason why they were allowed to build and use the Factory was the Cargo Tram.
They just started testing Cargo Tram system in Frankfurt again. Currently using older trams with seats still inside. Couple years ago they tested normal trams with cargobike containers from Onomotion
Saint-Petersburg had a freight tram system between 1914 and 2002. It played a major role in the city's defence during the Nazi siege. Nowadays most people only know of its existence from its role in the 1997 crime drama film "Brother" that is a cult classic in Russia.
Брат
Such a shame...
It was a really cool proof of concept, and the factory equipment itself was pretty high tech. It's a shame the trams were used exclusively for the production of cars, and at the same time it's a shame that they're replaced with hydrogen powered trucks. Something related to cargo trams is NYC MTA's garbage trains, using subway metro cars and open carriages to convey bags of trash.
I managed to see one of those CarGo trams whilst I was on holiday in Dresden 10 years ago
I worked for years fixing my hometown Skoda trolley or streetcars. Portland, Oregon. Within 10 years all of the trolleys lost its new luster and reliability. Every week one of streetcars were involved in an accident. Car drivers not paying attention.
Of the topic story-
City of Portland, behind Skoda’s back, let local manufacture come and copy most of the parts of the Skoda trolley. Basically illegally building a copy of the trolley cheaper. When Skoda found out they left took parts support and repair manuals with them. It was big mistake, costing taxpayers millions. The trolley manufacture built had no running software. It sat over 5 years, while engineers tried get it running. Finally when was ready. The operating system was ten years behind.
yikes! Bet they won't try that one again! Well done Skoda for teaching them a lesson.
Similiar thing happened decades ago when Czech Tratra T1 was send to one city in Poland (not remembering which at moment) and local tram manufacturer Konstal reverse ingeneer it into it´s own tram
and the system here still sucks, both our light rail and the streetcars
cargo trams are such a nice thing to have, the joke is that they almost never were used for the regular cargo requirments of a packed city struggling with congestion. Instead its most often just for a dim prestige project which never were about efficiency (like an inner city car factory/show room).
If these cargo trams had been used for essential needs which dont fluctuate with trends/singular company business they would have been a success. Every dense city has garbage/recycling collection points, post offices, huge shopping centers/markets with a constant flow of bulk goods and so on ... these should have been the objects utilizing cargo trams.
Yet even here in Dresden, where we already have the trams and a loading station far enough off with rail and road connection, noone even tries to give our inner city objects with cargo demand a tram loading station so that the number of trucks having to enter the inner city could be cut down in meaningful ways.
just shameful how poorly city planners think things through.
Glasgow's (first generation) tramways were built to 4'-7¾" gauge, specifically to permit standard gauge wagons to access that once extensive network. The reason for that odd gauge being that railway flanges are markedly deeper than those of trams, the upshot being it was the flanges of the railway wagons which ran in the grooves of the tramway. The feature WAS employed in a very limited capacity, over a short section of one route.
Obviously, no gauge widening was possible on curves (one of the big differences between tram and railway PW), which is why trams were so damnably slow (and usually noisy) around curves.
The ex-Glasgow trams working at Crich (Derbyshire) have been re-gauged to the standard 4'-8½", but are no less stunning for that. This paragraph has been a shameless plug for the National Tramway Museum ... do please check their website and prepare to be amazed !!!
Yeah plus it had within it, apparently, the seeds of its own demise, or indeed that of the pre-driverless car era we are about to enter, didn't it? The whole factory automated and all that? Wow. Another great vid from Ruairidh.
Cargo trams are a great idea in theory, and can work in limited cases as shown here... but anyone with more than a rudimentary understanding of how logistics works (or how tram networks function) will be able to tell you how difficult and disruptive it would be for widespread adoption. Even in cities with huge tram networks like Prague, for things like garbage collection, you would still need a large fleet of regular garbage trucks for the majority of streets that aren't on the tram network. Using tramways for cargo is a nice idea, but how many people would be happy with a half-hour gap in their tram timetable because that's when the Tesco Metro gets their cargo tram delivery?
This urbanist utopian idea of everything being delivered by tram or quadricycle is just a pipedream, outside of a few edge cases in places like Switzerland.
@@Eric_Hunt194 trucks disrupt tram networks just the same in dense cities where both share the same (cross)roads, and noone was talking about trams collecting garbage or roadside shops ... I refered to regular bulk loads going from and to larger objects in the inner city, not trams becoming the last mile delivery like the Amazon truck or bread delivery for a shop.
Every larger city has larger objects in its dense center where a large number of trucks stop every day to drop off or take on cargo. So these loading bays are usually rather large to also accomandate multiple trucks at once. Such objects could have the point of delivery offsite, replacing its spacious truck loading bays and turning points with a tram stop (which still could double up for the occasional truck like tram stops do for busses) and then a cargo tram would only have to come when its filled up with deliveries from a large number of trucks. And such a trip wouldnt disrupt the regular passenger service of the trams, as stopping points would be off the regular line ofc. So there would be no tram waiting while your roadside supermarket is getting its bread, because thats not what a cargo tram would do.
And no tram line service is so dense that they couldnt fit multiple cargo trams in between.
@@diedampfbrasse98 the issue is that cargo takes longer to load and unload compared to passengers, so if they're sharing tracks they'll get in the way.
Cargo trams are a great idea for the niche cases where they will work, but they aren't suitable for such widespread adoption that they could eliminate LGVs (or LKWs, to use the German terminology)
I have heard about this in the past. It is bit sad that this system is no longer in operation, on the other hand I was one of a kind vehicle for single task - moving parts between two sites, so it was only natural that with changes in production, this system became obsolete. On the other hand it is bit pity that this concept did not became more widespread in Dresden as it could have been used for other purposes as well, but maybe the design was too limiting for other uses. I really can't see trash or gravel being transported in carriages that will within few hours be transporting delicate car parts or food. That would perhaps require something closer to train with two locomotives, than to EMU.
In my opinion one of the greatest obstacle to more broader adoption of freight trams and freight metro is that there are currently no carriages that could easily operate on on tram networks and on standard railways. This means that goods have to be transloaded which results in delays and danger of the goods being damaged and at that point it is perhaps easier to send them by road. Sure, there would have to be some special tram locomotives build, but at the beginning maybe small shunter diesels or some refurbished old tram locomotives (one should be on display in Bratislava) could do the job until new one are designed. But we will still need some carriages that can negotiate tight curves (all the way down to some 25 metres) and that can fit through much smaller loading gauge, also they should be design with shipping containers in mind. Maybe then we will see return of the freight trams, but unless that is done, their role will be IMHO highly limited and most cities will not use them at all. Not even for transport of trash from collecting points to waste-to-energy plants and so on.
Certainly an area that a couple of rail engineering firms looking into could have productive results 🤔
The irony of a car manufacturer using a Tram for its parts because it's more efficient. Makes one think, doesn't it...
I mean, this comes from the same company that fooled the world about its "clean diesel" for over a decade. They got caught and swicthed to EVs hurriedly, and now even that market is collapsing too.
It's not really ironic, it's just exploiting an opportunity created by location. Similarly it isn't "ironic" that most car imports to the UK from continental Europe are done by train, it's just exploiting economies of scale. The alternative is 40 HGVs (and 40 drivers) which is slower and more costly.
@@Eric_Hunt194yes it is very ironic. You use efficient Transport methods to build inefficent ones.
@@KeVIn-pm7pu Unfortunately cars are more spacious than public transportation.
@@AlfarrisiMuammar That is one aspect of 'efficiency', more people in a smaller space.
Madrid is implementing something symilar. They'll allow amazon type delivery packages being transported in the metro.
@augustusimperator.avi1872
Any article or video about it?
Many cities in the US,had trolley freight operations,and also garbage trains! To name two very prominent systems,Philadelphia(PRT)had an extensive garbage disposal system,and Brooklyn(BRT),was also a heavy user! Flushing Meadows,the site of the 1939,and 1964 World's Fair was the old Corona Dump,and was/is filled land! A bit of hidden history,in plain sight! Thank you 😇 😊!
Freight trolleys are as old as the electric streetcar. Infact america had thousands of these freight motors trundling across it at one time from slower locomotive types to the boxes with trailers running highspeed across the mainlines of their interurbans.
Heck at times they would even run on other systems. At times. Both loaded and just transfer. It was a freight motor like this that made the daring 200 mile trip solo from Trenton NJ winding along to Hershey PA..
Tom Scott would have loved this. Man, I miss his videos.
America: what if we put passenger trains on our freight lines?
Germany: what if we put freight trains on our passenger lines?
Britain: What if we rip our rail lines off?
America: We had ripped our tram lines of a century ago. Don't make that mistake!
Russia: Hold my beer *privatized everything (bus, tram, trolleybus, river transport) and literally everything just closed and turned into scrap and now we have only route taxis in most cities except non-privatized Moscow transport*
Thats real, in my city we've got a bus in... 2022. After 20+ years of existence without ANY transport except taxi and route taxi.
@@Andrey_Gysev TBF, in Soviet times they kept the public transport ubiquitous.
From '90s on began the major extinction.
And the municipal transport is usually not privatized, just starved of paying passengers, goes decrepit and dies out.
@@u2bear377 Yes! I remember my grandma told me that there were a bus and a river bus to her very small village and neighbours from the city itself! Thats crazy to think rn!
I remember i've seen tram rails back when i was 5 and thought what are they for and my ma told me that there was a massive tram network in my city back in soviet times...
Our municipal transport went bankcupt forcefully and now we have only privatized transport.
@@u2bear377Australia: And that's why we're putting them back in.
If the Pheaton would have been an Audi it would have been a succes. See the A8.
I had never heard about cargo trams. Interesting concept.
The Touareg was introduced at a similar time already sharing the platform/factory with the Porsche Cayenne but Touareg had Diesel engines up to the V10 TDI and W12 petrol engine while the Cayennes had homegrown V6 and V8 engines with the topend option being the Turbo V8.
However the Q7 was introduced three years after the Touareg.
During that time they also offered a version of the Passat with a W8 engine (the only model that had this engine, they didn't take the V8 from the Audi S4) even offering Connolly Leather, however it failed with only 11 000 sold between 2001 and 2004.
These were the Volkswagen Halo cars initiated by Ferdinand Piëch, at least the air conditioning went into the A8 D5 (also with these vent covers).
Phaeton was not really a failure.
The Phaeton was designed for 2 reasons; to elevate the prestige of Volkswagen and to build a platform for the upcoming Bentley Continental GT and Flying Spur.
VW made all their money back with the Phaeton in the success of later cars based on its platform like the Bentley Continentals and Porsche Panamera.
the A8 is not a success
it only exists because there kind marque Audi wants to be is nothing takes serious without a limousine of that type
BMW 7 series and any Mercedes S classes sell 10x better each
the A8 is not a success
it only exists because the kind marque Audi wants to be is not taken seriously without a limousine of that type
BMW 7 series and any Mercedes S classes sell 10x better each
@@TheImperfectGuy In Europe the A8 is a success. The A8 only sells 50% less units than the Mercedes S-Class and even surpasses 7-Series sales figures in some years. In the U.S. you guys don’t recognize the A8 as a legitimate competitor to those cars for some reason so you don’t buy them, but everywhere else the A8 sells very well.
Damn, these are cool. If only more existed
This is a great idea, if you've got enough money to throw at it. From the sound of things, that tram had the cargo capacity of 3 trucks. But I bet it cost a lot more than 3 trucks to buy. And the track to connect the cargo zone of the factory to the main tram line was another additional cost on top of that. Sure, it probably cost less to operate (until it became old & needed excessive maintenance). But I bet the payback period for the added up-front cost was a few times longer than the lifespan of the tram.
Now, if the idea were to catch on & cargo trams got built in the hundreds, instead of being bespoke, the cost would maybe be worth while. To achieve something like that, you'd need a descent sized country to initiate things with a nationwide plan to use cargo trams for something like waste transfer (what that Swiss tram mentioned at the end does). That will create some scale for manufacturer of the units pulling the cost downward.
Small pronunciation hint: German chs is pronounced x. In fact, many words, which in English are spelled with x, have an chs in German, like Achse - axle, Fuchs - fox, Füchsin - vixen, Wachs - wax, Flachs - flax, Sachsen - Saxony and similarly Sachsenring - Ring of Saxony. Chemnitz comes from Slavic kamen = stone, hence it is pronounced Kemnitz (in fact, a suburb of Dresden is called Kemnitz).
The Cargo-Tram truely is a loss for humanity, but it has to be said that the routes in Dresden had to be specially reinforced for the MUCH heavier Cargo-Tram. Additionally others have mentioned the weird gauge and space-profile of tracks used for Dresden's trams stopping cargo carriages to be sent around the city directly from normal gauge tracks.
Was the tack gauge really that big of a problem? Under certain conditions, like limited speed and section of tracks being equipped with guide rails, standard gauge boogies can operate on broad gauge track, that is further 70 mm wider than tram gauge in Dresden.
Imagine having this system connecting freight railroads and truck routes in the USA especially major cities especially NYC. Sending goods from Brooklyn, Manhattan, Bronx, Queens to NJ. Which can relief most of the traffic on its highway bridges and tunnels.
Yup. NYC used to have an extensive tram system (albeit for passengers), until the motorbike lobby put paid to it.
Given NYC is infamous for refuse collection issues, I can imagine a cargo tram refuse variant would be really useful on routine high intensity collection routes.
Do nyc still do freight on transit to transport deliveries, cargo goods and to transport trash?
@@jimtaylor294 Don't they do that for garbage collection, using the subway lines?
The last hurrah it was. Very cool.
Not really efficient on most large tram networks. 1. Almost every modern urban tram network has a number of bottleneck sections that usually operate at 95-100% capacity. Those determine the "room" for any cargo trams on the (rest of the) network, if there is any room at all, because... 2. Modern (large) urban tram networks usually have very low headways/very frequent service on their main sections. This means a cargo tram would need to adhere to these timetables, and it would need to be squeezed in between normal passenger trams. 3. A number of similar plans had cargo trams running at night. There is a reason a lot of networks do not operate at night (or only on a limited part of the network, or on weekends only) because this is generally when network maintenance is done.
An idea with potential certainly.
Here in the UK I can see a refuse variant being ideal for town center refuse collection, to take up a large part of the work normally done by diesel bin lorries.
(with bin lorries being freed up for smaller volume collections elsewhere)
I saw them a few times driving around the city, but only about 3 times in 10 years. But they are always cool to see!
Little pronunciation help - the "ch" in "Chemnitz" is actually pronounced the same way that an English speaker would say the "ch" in "chemistry". But even some Germans sometimes get it wrong if they are from other parts of the country. Just by looking at the letters of the word, it isn't obvious.And the proper pronunciation of he first part of the name "Sachsenring" is something that English speakers would likely hesitate about. It's very close to a word that I probably can't put in the comment, which s*cks... 😉 But there is nothing problematic about the word "Sachsen" in German, so don't worry.
Interestingly, the City of Frankfurt am Main just concluded a 4 week long test for something that is related in concept.
In a cooperation between their local tram operator VGF, a university (I think from Frankfurt directly) and Amazon, they used a type "Pt" tram car from 1978, which is only kept as an operating spare, to haul smaller Amazon deliveries from a point at the outskirts of the city to a mostly unused track loop next to the Frankfurt zoo. From where the cargo would be delivered to the customers via electric cargo bikes.
Sure, this is not a purpose-built vehicle, and from the photos it looks like all the modifications they did was to put on a vinyl wrap advertising the project, but after all, this was just an experiment for a limited time. But from what I heard, it was successful and they are considering the idea to turn this into something more permanent.
Glasgow in the 1800s had sections of tram track in standard railway gauge, so cargo delivered to the city on flatbeds or cargo boxes could be moved to street level and moved to factories and shipyards with an electric-powered shunt. All the tram lines were torn up in the 50s and 60s in favour of diesel buses.
It's such a shame that 20 years ago companies and governments had more ambition to be eco-friendly and relieve the roads than nowadays - when we need it more than ever.
Completely untrue. The UK’s combined greenhouse gas emissions fell by 5.7% in 2023 to their lowest level since 1879, we're currently sat at 383MtCO2e.
Still the world will not hit the 1.5°C goal. It could be so much more ambitious.
@@haramaschabrasir8662 meanwhile, in communist China...
@@Eric_Hunt194 lmao China communist lmao
Don't kid yourself. This wasn't about being eco-friendly. It was a PR stunt to bring attention to the car.
Australia could have saved its manufacturing sector if we embraced this technology.
I find it ironic that various modes of transport, rail and tram, would contribute to either its demise in many countries; or reduction in use, by carrying parts for or complete cars that ultimately took passengers away from them…
🏴
I lived in Dresden until 2021 and I remember seeing these every now and then. I didn't know they stopped service, which is a shame. They should've kept going with them, as it's great marketing, especially for their new electric model.
Fantastic video never even heard of cargo trams before fantastic video and informative as always
Interesting concept
The San Diego light rail system is a legitimate heavy rail freight railroad at night, connecting numerous industrial customers to the national rail network.
what scares me from the footage shown of the factory is any bright red/yellow barriers and gates on the factory floor.
never even knew the Phaeton existed.
Never heard of this before! Really cool concept!
6:00 Your description of the Phaeton is completely inaccurate. Parts weren't transferred over from the Bentley Continental to build the Phaeton, the Bentley actually used alot of the Phaetons parts. The Phaeton came out 2 years sooner and was effectively a test bed for the Bentley Continental GT. I don't like how this narrative that the Phaeton is a just rebadged Bentley has become so pervasive; the later Continentals and Flying Spurs are rebadged Phaeton's, not the other way round. I also take issue with your statement that the Phaeton was merely on par with the Audi A8, the Phaeton was actually better in most aspects; and this is coming from an A8 owner. The Phaeton was more refined, more comfortable, higher quality and the cheaper vehicle. The Audi is more dynamic thanks to its aluminium architecture and stiffer suspension but not on par with the Phaeton when it comes to luxury. The Phaeton was better than even the 7-Series and S-Class when it came out; it was that good. Even Jeremy Clarkson admitted when it came out that it was the luxury car to buy.
Brilliant idea. Seems needs replication evrywhere. Too bad they chose the Phaeton andbthe id3.
Not sure if this Cargo Tram still runs. It was used to transport parts to the Phaeton plant in Dresden...but that vehicle is no longer manufactured.
So - short version - The laudable green transport component had been made from clapped out equipment built to obsolete design formulated decades earlier became unreliable, leading to it's being phased out just as the production line switched from ICE to EV production.
There's a certain commonality with the penny-pinching bargain basement approach which has blighted UK industry since ..... for ever.
I believe there is still a cargo tram service operating in one of the Swiss cities.
if they haven't been sold yet, I would love to buy them!
Use metric units.
or at least both imperial AND metric
Trafford Park near Manchester had trains running through it until the early 2000s serving the Container Base and freight terminal. Then everybody lost interest. Oh and of course cost would have played a part.
Still, Andy Burnham will be trying to get his paws on a few Billion, so you never know.
If I may be the linguistic pedant: Chemnitz is pronounced like it's got a K. So just Kemnitz. Yes, it makes no sense within German phonetics.
And Sachsenring being Saksenring not Saschenring
Meanwhile in England we have towns/cities like Frome (Froom), Leicester (Lester), Towcester (Toaster) and Wymondham (Wind-ham)... and Scotland goes one better with Milngavie (Mull-guy). The Welsh are awkward too, but at least their language makes phonetic sense once you learn it!
Nice video, well done!
What a cool idea! Cheers from CBR AU, RMV
I thought this was gonna be a video about a scheme where you put your car on a tram.
I was gonna say "Doesn't that defeat the point?"
If it was that, not really defeating the point. No different to the shuttle trains in the Channel Tunnel or through the Alpine base tunnels, just on a smaller scale.
I can totally see it making sense if you need to transport a car within a city and it can't drive itself.
It would be could to have one of these in a HO Scale model
Perhaps they could introduce and fit out the existing tram cars as Restaurant cars as have appeared in other parts of the world...and transverse attractive areas of Dresden night and day.
Would make an Interesting tourist attraction.
Pretty good concept really. I'm sure it could be used elsewhere, if implemented correctly (and that's a big IF).
VW Phaeton: If I pay just about the same amount for a VW badged Bentley, then I prefer the Bentley. The entire disaster with the Phaeton was down to the badge. Back when I still did not like the Bentley Continental, I used to call those the Phaeton Coupe. To day I love the Continental and the Spur and my Mulsanne.
@@drstevenrey Wasn’t a VW badged Bentley the Continentals were Bentley badged Phaetons. The Phaeton came out 1 year earlier and the Continental only began development after the Phaeton project had been greenlit. That’s also why I love the Mulsanne so much; it’s completely independent from the Phaeton’s influence and still bears the old L-Series V8 that Bentley had been using for years. The Mulsanne is really the last proper Bentley in my eyes. Enjoy your Mulsanne, it’s the last of it's kind.
And they ripped it out this year :(
Will they replace it with something close to it?
Wouldn't such a system be useful for carrying cargo to commercial areas and markets focused on walkability and public transit, thus removing the need for letting trucks in
Hopefully at least one trainset will get donated to a museum.
3:25 I Didn't Know Tram Cars In Germany Into Goods Trains. Thanks Mate. XXxxx 🇬🇧 🇩🇪🇫🇷🇮🇳🇮🇪🇦🇺 🇺🇸
The Ford Probe should've been taking up two bays with a three foot gap at the back for extra realism
There is a new cargo tram in service at Frankfurt for Amazon
1:40 - It’s not Tshemnitz. It has the same sound as the CH in sCHiphol airport.
Gemnitz
Weltniveau
Just to make it clear, the CarGoTram is no longer in use. The tracks to the factory have been demolished last year
The whole thing was a bit nuts from the car to the factory - effectively almost designing in inefficiency - the tram should never have existed as the factory should never have been separated. Bonkers! This was the sort of idea a wealthy company might create when flush with cash and notionally create a new ‘thing’
Or just build your logistics centre next to the factory
Not china?
This factory was specifically build to show off, VW wanted to show it's customers that they could build premium cars. That is why it is in the middle of Dresden and mostly build from glass. Invited customers are able to take a look at most of the assembly process.
if, as you state, it was expensive to maintain and constantly broke down, would it not have made more financial/logistical sense to keep the lorries?
From the thumbnail i thought it's a tram on wheels and thought, no way that's efficient.
You have my agreement. Let's move cargo on rails. However the biggest problem is still not this, but the cars. We should do everything we can to transition out of cars. Ban them, get alternatives for disabled people. That's what will fix congestion. The only traffic jam i've seen that contains trucks is out of city and a cargo tram wouldn't fix that.
This is literally just interurban freight motors all over again
This isn't really different from using railway sidings. And most railway sidings are now abandoned.
4:10 ... "20,000 square metres of gas". Would this be maybe cubic metres?
Did it get daved in a museum at all
If the infrastructure is already installed, use it.
1:42 Hah! Finally! ze German wins against the Engländer!! All those years of of taunting us with names like Leicester, Worcester and Edinburgh, we finally get our revenge!! while its written Chemnitz, its pronunced with a k like Kemnitz Muhahahahahaha
No but very interesting video, thank you very much :)
>Edinburgh
>Englander
I find this idea good. Trams, here in Switzerland as well, go past all the big shops and stores in the city. I would probably move the cargo at night. And it's not Sashen, it's Saksen and it is called Kemnits and not Shemnis. It's German, not English, get it. Stop ignorance on languages.
I Zurich we have some garbage transported by tram. I think running trams at night would disturb citizens, houses along the line vibrate, and there is a lot of noise.
Getting triggered over something as trivial as a mispronunciation of a place name. Wow, phone the police...
No reason to ridicule someone for mispronouncing a name. Simply correct them so they learn how to pronounce it but no need to talk down to them
@@Swiss4.2 It's not the first time, it is constant and it is called ignorance.
@@gentuxable It isn´t like the trams would run every five minutes or so, just a few for the stores plus the normal night trams. But I thing that labour costs would be too high at night for it to be viable and delivering it during the day (without extra tracks) could disrupt passenger traffic.
whenever I see a video like this with an AI voiceover I’m not sure I can trust any of the information being presented, I’m sorry if you wrote this video yourself but the style just isn’t for me and I’m not sure that I’m learning anything (I really wish there was a video on this subject with an actual voiceover)
That's his actual voice 😂
Now, I don't mind lorries, but there are too many of them on the road.
Heroic effort, trying to pronounce german words. Just ask, ve ar happi to teash ju.
Why is the carrying capacity of the tram given in imperial units. This is 21st Century Germany!
@peter_smyth football fields > "meters"
Pity they weren't so transparent regarding their emissions....2
Please look up how the non-English names are pronounced, before you make such a video. It would make a much better quality.
While this was just for some dumb VW factory , we couldve had this nationwide and had greatness , every city thriving and bustling , walkable everywhere with way more trams busses and no more HGV's , we were this || close to perfection
😭 So ein Scheißdreck ...
Alligatoah?
The presence of coaches and lorries on the road proves the railway system is broken
Probably the only tram that actually generated a profit. Public transit is so grossly unprofitable and inefficient for passenger traffic when cars are far more effective. This is why passenger trains and bus service is a pale shadow of itself
Agree completely. But yet fares are still monstrously expensive (looking at train travel in the UK). The issue is people dont see just how expensive it is to run, they just see the ticket price and assume they're making millions. In reality they're spending those millions at just as fast a rate
Which fantasy world do you live in?
@hedgehog3180 railway groups > railway