In October we visited two countries in Central Asia that have trams or trolleybuses. We took various flights but also had to use taxis to reach some of our destinations (some of these taxi rides lasted 3-5 hours each: money well spent to save precious time). We did spend a number days in most of the cities visited (more than we normally do) but then apartments are cheap and so is the food. Weather is difficult to predict and having more days also helps in talking ones way into depots (sometimes you don’t succeed the first time as there is nobody there to say “yes”). We had great weather for the first half of the trip (Golden October with many sunny warm days). In Temirtau we had rain one day and sunshine the next. In Öskemen it got cold with some light snow covering the city for a while (staying on the hills in the background). It did not get much warmer in Bishkek and Naryn (but it was often sunny) and only in Osh we got a feel of summer (with temperatures nearing 30° Celsius during the day). Pavlodar was the most interesting system we visited (lots of trams after all) and Osh we liked the most (but we only managed to have one full day there as our first flight got cancelled and we had to spend another day in Bishkek – taxi ride would have been 12 hours through the mountains). The most breathtaking taxi ride was from Bishkek to Naryn and back. The scenery is fantastic (we drove up to 3003m height) but doing 120-160km/h on certain mountain stretches on the winding roads or with traffic coming your way is an adventure in itself (unless you are a professional racing driver).
Almaty (KZ) – October
There are no trams here anymore (we did see a painting of one Tatra car in a small buffet restaurant near the downtown railway station Almaty 2 and most of the old tracks are still there at least in the areas we visited, maybe trams will come back one day…). Last year 99 new Chinese trolleybuses appeared (after a prototype in 2022) and much of the bus fleet has been replaced with similar looking CNG buses). Under 150 of the older Neoplan Kazakhstan trolleybuses remain in service but they really do show their age on the outside (built 2008-2013). To ride the buses one needs to buy a chip card. It is easy to put money on these cards as there are hundreds if not thousands of machines all over the city where one can “charge” all sorts of cards and pay for other services with cash but getting these cards is not easy. Luckily we saw a big sign for their main distribution office whilst taking photographs at Almaty 2 railway station. On the short but modern metro one can also use this card but they also sell plastic tokens (we only managed to “obtain” yellow and green ones – the green ones are painted yellow tokens which are given out only if you pay by card – they are reluctant to sell more than 4-5 tokens at a time and don’t tell them you want to take them home as souvenirs!). To keep the tokens you need to buy more than you need or simply buy them and then use the card for the gates. We did see the real red tokens behind the ticket counters and also the red tokens which are painted yellow tokens plus some grey tokens (again these are painted yellow tokens) but these can only be bought for children (probably one type is for cash and one type for card payment). We tried… There are some very long lines but traffic during the day is rather dense. Taking photos in such traffic is tricky as the trolleybus drivers don’t leave much space between them and the car in front in fear of some other car squeezing in (we experienced the very same problems in the next country we visited).
Pavlodar (KZ) – October
A large network with mostly very frequent lines (some overlap). Many of the old KTM-5s remain in service. Tickets can only be bought from the driver (200 Tenge) with cash or by using an app (100 Tenge). We bought a telephone SIM card for this but it turns out that in KZ they use +7 (Russia = ex USSR) numbers for most web based services instead of their local +8 and thus the app works perfectly except for the import last part : payment (declined due to the +7 code). We tried to visit the depot but got turned down (strategic object they said). But we did manage to rent (charter) the cafe tram (no longer called that). We had asked for other cars but only this one can be rented. We booked it for three hours and this is how long it took us to just travel along the 3 “industrial” lines (see below re: state of the track). To make photo stops on this ride meant we had to teach them what this strange concept is but eventually they worked it out and we did many stops – but limited to the industrial lines as the city network was “just too busy” for them. These three were built to bring the workers from their living quarters in the city to the various industries in the north and south west of the city. All have regular service on them most of the time during the day except for the very end bit of the north western line that goes beyond the terminal loop of lines 3+4. During our visit we did not see many people ride these lines but then we did not go to all the places during the peak hours and only observed those lines in the city (not being very full). We did make sure to ride the only time they serve this northern bit mentioned above: in the late afternoon 3 trams run together in convoy: all KTM-5s – the first is a double set (line 3, we boarded it when it came out of the depot for this run at around 16.30h and were the only passengers), the second car is a single unit (line 13) and the third one is again a single car (line 9). Only the last car takes passengers back into town. You can apparently go out on all three services but the first two returning are reserved for workers (we assume the service is paid for by one of the large plants, possibly the oil plant). We wanted to do it again the next day but were too tired from walking and riding all day. We did notice many private buses and coaches used to bring back workers to town and out third tram remained fairly empty on the trip back. These industrial lines have a real “interurban feeling” to them and the track work is not the best. Of all the three tram systems this one was the most fun to visit.
gallery 1 – part I
gallery 2 – part II
garrely 3 – part III – private hire/charter with KTM-5 #97
