Lisbon, Portugal
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The railways, trams, shipping and industry of Portugal
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Lisbon's railways, tramways and chimneys

Quick links to :-     Douro Valley railways, shipping and industry     Lisbon     Madeira     Porto
    Regua and the Villa Real and Lamego branchlines

In pride of place..... Lisbon's magnificent trams

The Modern Image

I've decided the best way to display these is in numerical order - that's what comes of being a computer programmer in a statistical company... So the new ones come first. These are fleet nos. 501 -510

and now, real trams...

Fleet Nos 541 - 585 are rebuilds of earlier cars

These are normally used for private hire..

Fleet Nos. 713, 732, 733, 735, 741, 744

Cais do Sodre Station

Santa Apononia Station

Industry and chimneys

Porto

Quick links to :-     Douro Valley railways, shipping and industry     Lisbon     Madeira     Porto
    Regua and the Villa Real and Lamego branchlines

Porto City

Railways, bridges, funicular and industry

Porto's tramways

Regua and the Vila Real and Lamego branchlines

Quick links to :-     Douro Valley railways, shipping and industry     Lisbon     Madeira     Porto
    Regua and the Villa Real and Lamego branchlines

Regua

Regua is situated on the north bank of the River Douro and there are three major bridges across it in the town. Farthest away from the station is the soaring and impressive new motorway bridge from Viseu. This, the Ponte Miguel Torga, goes across the River Douro at a height of up to 85 metres at its maximum. It is a pre-stressed concrete bridge and elegantly conveys the IP3 motorway.

The nearest of the three bridges to the railway station is the attractive "Ponte Metalica" or Metallic Bridge. This was built as a road bridge in 1872 in King D. Luis I reign, whose name and bridge-building are more famously linked in the main Ponte D. Luis double-deck bridge in Oporto. However, the 19th century bridge in Regua had to be taken out of use in 1949 due to the poor state of its wooden "table" carrying the roadway. After, incredibly, more than sixty years of being unused for any purpose, it is now (2011) being repaired, but for pedestrian-only use, at a cost of more than one million euros.

In 1949, therefore, road traffic was transferred to the adjacent unused rail bridge, which had been constructed years earlier for the proposed line from Regua to Lamego. However, that railway was never built and the bridge was therefore available for road traffic and is the one still in use today.

Regua to Lamego Railway

The rail link from Regua to Lamego was planned as early as 1906, the same year that the line up the opposite valley was opened to Vila Real. However, although the foundations for the track had been made and space for the station at Lamego had long been earmarked, the railway only got as far as building the vital bridge across the Douro in 1933. Further delays meant that World War II effectively put an end to the whole project, leaving not only the rail bridge as a white elephant, but also another structure a little distance from Regua - the Varosa bridge. For more on this aborted rail project see the "Narrow gauge railways of Portugal" by W.J.K. Davies (Plateway Press, 1998), pages 135-36 and 273

Douro Valley

Quick links to :-     Douro Valley railways, shipping and industry     Lisbon     Madeira     Porto
    Regua and the Villa Real and Lamego branchlines

Railways, shipping and industry

Madeira

Quick links to :-     Douro Valley railways, shipping and industry     Lisbon     Madeira     Porto
    Regua and the Villa Real and Lamego branchlines

Madeira's mountainside rack railway


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