Year 2008
The year 2008 has been a successful for our tramway museum. We "kicked off" during March with the usual training drills for our operational staff, followed by the building of the inspection pit in our workshop in April. This substantially improved our maintenance capabilities.
In the mean time, reservations for hired trams were quite good, our trackgang replaced lots of sleepers and ballast, did a group of our tramdrivers work in contract for the GVB on city trams, thus enhancing our finacial position. A public park was openend with it's own tramstop and last but not least, we covered our open-air storage with a 720 square-metre roof in December.
What shall we do in 2009? Just open this website once in a while and you will find out
building work
December 23rd
A large roof of 720 square metres has been erected over our (former) open-air storage facility. This roof is made of a sturdy, but light-weight construction by a firm that specializes in building large green-houses. Our volunteers helped along to suppress the total man-hours costs.
This roof will be a temporary solution untill a new storage facility can be created.
We hope that with this investment, the deterioration by weather influences of the stored trams can be halted.
wagon news
BvB 721 523-7
A small fleet of wagons are part of the equipment of our track gang. These wagons are always stored outside in all kinds of weather and therefore they start to decline after a few years in service. From the Berlin verkehrs Betrieb we have three exellent two-axles wagons, that are used intensively.
Two of these already received an overhaul during 2005 and now the third car will finally receive well deserved attention in our workshop. The wagon was rolled into the shop on October 11th, where work is now well on its way to replace corroded steel work.
Last tram 2008
After the last Christmas tram had returned to Haarlemmermeerstation, it was time for our volunteers to enjoy a well deserved tramride with traditional Dutch winter snacks and hot drinks like Glühwein or chocolate. See our video (click ont the picture) to taste some of the atmosphere of this freezing cold night event.
restoration 754
The roof is now almost ready to be covered with a special fabric and then painted to make it water-proof.
The photo below shows GVB 754.
HTM 58
This big interurban car is now in The Hague to undergo major repairs. A fund has been raised by a private individual who has a keen interest in this type of interurban tramcar.
Christmas
Our yearly Christmas specials were less well patronised compared with previous years. This trend had also been observed with other preserved railways. We think that the bad news about the economy may have contributed to this. We aim to improve passenger numbers, as we are dependant on revenue from these specials.
Special links