The earliest precursor of the Vienna tramway network was the Brigittenauer Eisenbahn, a horse tramway which operated from 1840 to 1842. It ran from the Donaukanal to the recreational establishment known as the Kolosseum. By October 1865, Schaeck-Jaquet & Co. had won the concession to build an 'urban horse tramway' which operated between Schottentor and Hernals. Six months later, the route was extended to Dornbach.
The Vienna authorities tried to promote more firms to build tramways but difficulties resulted in the various firms, including Schaeck-Jaquet & Co., merging to form the Wiener Tramway Gesellschaft. Subsequently, it was this firm that built most of the city tramway network.
In 1883, the Dampftramway Krauss & Co. opened Vienna's first steam tramway line, between Hietzing and Perchtoldsdorf, which was extended further south in 1887 towards the city centre at Gaudenzdorf. Around the turn of the twentieth century, Vienna's mayor (Karl Lueger) began the municipalisation of urban services, which had been in private hands. In 1899, the municipality received a 90-year concession from the Imperial Railway Ministry for "a network of standard gauge light railway lines in Vienna to be operated by electric power".
On 28 January 1897, an electric tram operated for the first time in Vienna - on the tracks of today's route 5 - and the electric trams quickly became very popular. On 26 June 1903, the last horse tram trotted back to its depot. In 1907, the route designations, using numbers and letters, were introduced. The steam tramway was able to continue operating its services until 1922 on a few branch lines in the outer suburbs.
Our postcard illustrates a peculiarly Viennese tramway tradition, that of "Die Letzte Blaue" or "The Last Blue". In Vienna, the last tram run of the day was called "Die Blaue" (The Blue). The card (c.1908) shows Vienna tram no.193 on route 'F' which ran at that date on weekdays from Währing (Kreuzgasse, NW Vienna), via Ring - Landstraßer Hauptstraße, to Sankt Marx (SE Vienna). It is a cartoon-style drawing by Ruol R. Kristen (of whom we know nothing) but with genuine tram features, especially with a blue lamp at the rear of the tram which is clearly shining on the road in the foreground - of which more below. This particular card has not been posted but was published by 'B. K. W. I.' (Bruder Kohn, Wien I) as series number '686-4'.
We see a number of people dashing for the tram. One has apparently fallen over drunk by the tram steps and another is running with a double-bass on his back! The postcard title shows the word "Blaue", i.e. within quotation marks. This is because the German word could have a tenuous double meaning. In addition to meaning 'blue', the word 'blau' (without an 'e') can mean 'drunk'. So, with some literary and grammatical licence, it might be read as 'The Last Drunks' as well as 'The Last Blue'.
With some artistic licence, the tram type features irregular width windows, with a destination plate just above the rear blue lamp that appears to read 'Währing'. The precise location of the scene (if genuine) is unknown but, with hills/mountains in the background on the left, reminiscent of the Vienna Woods, it is more likely to be at the Währing end of the route. Today, Währing is a built-up area with many more modern buildings so the supposed 'tavern' on the right may no longer exist, if it ever did.
The number 193 at this date would have referred to class D, a shorter tram, but the one in the card strongly resembles class G in its original form, with the variable width windows, which were later changed to equal sized windows. Over 500 of such trams were built in 1901/03 by Grazer Waggonfabrik for the tram company Bau- und Betriebsgesellachaft für städtische Strassenbahnen and for the Neue Wiener Tramway Gesellschaft.
Tram route numbers in Vienna followed a system. The low numbers were circular routes, including the Ringbahn. Routes above 20 were radial routes starting with 21 in the northeast and increasing anticlockwise towards the southeast. Routes with letters, such as F, entered the city on one side, ran around part of the Ringbahn and then left again. There were a few exceptions, even more today, and the lettered routes have all been withdrawn and replaced by shorter radial routes.
What is it about the blue lamp and 'The Last Blue'? As early as 1873 or 1874, the last trams of the day on each route of the Wiener Tramway-Gesellschaft (WT, or Vienna Tramway Company) were marked with a blue disc, possibly in addition to the then coloured route indicator. The system continued into the electric era when the rear headlight of the last tram of the day received a blue lens instead of a red one. If trailers were used, they carried a blue disc at the back.The specific term/designation was partially abolished during the Nazi era in Austria (1938-45), but has remained in colloquial use for the last tram to the present day as a nostalgic expression, even though the blue lights are no longer used.
Between the wars, the Vienna fleet reached its maximum extent with some 4000 trams operating a network of over 300 km (about 200 miles).In the mid-1950s, there were plans to abolish the tramway but other voices prevailed and the system was saved and modernised, slowly at first due to the difficulty of obtaining new trams. The Vienna U-Bahn (officially opened in 1978) led to further extensive line closures in the tramway network. However, the continued existence of the tramway in Vienna is no longer in question and there are even some new route openings, with more planned.The current operator, Wiener Linien, runs a fleet of about 530 trams on 28 routes over a route length of 230km (c. 140 miles).
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