Trams. The trains of the streets. Once a staple of British cities, first as horsedrawn trams and eventually electricity as the dominant power method, the rise of the motorcar and busses (and even trolley busses) saw basically all of our tram tracks ripped up by the 1960s.
Now they’re oddities with limited routes in Croydon, Manchester, Nottingham, Edinburgh and a few other cities in the UK.Over on the continent, though?
Well, Vienna’s trams are iconic, and there’s large networks in Cologne, Berlin, Milan, Budapest and beyond that never went away, living alongside busses, metros and trains.
They often have the best of all worlds, serving inner cities, having large raised platforms, and minimal air pollution.So anyway, trams are pretty neat if you’re a public transport user, and the team at ViewApp agree.
A few years on from the TramSim games, they’ve now released City Transport Simulator: Tram, bringing the game out of Steam Early Access this week.I’ll be honest, the simulator craze has largely passed me by, but I’ve got childhood memories of catching trams in Vienna or Budapest on holiday, and there’s always a tram ride or two each year at Gamescom.