It makes perfect sense that a publishing house based in Austria should deal with the history of a tramway company now located in the Ukraine, as the city of Lviv, the capital of Eastern Galicia, belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire for almost 150 years. In 1914, Lviv was the fourth largest city in the monarchy after Vienna, Budapest and Prague! A standard-gauge horse-drawn tramway opened in 1880 and was replaced by a metre-gauge electric tramway in 1894. With the collapse of the Danube Monarchy after the end of the First World War, Lviv had a number of new names and was part of various states: the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic of 1919 was followed by the first Polish Republic after two years of armed conflict, and from 1939 to 1944 it was occupied by Hitler’s Germany, temporarily replaced by a Soviet administration until 1941, which then lasted from 1944 until 1991 and was replaced by an independent Ukraine.
For a better understanding of the development of the tramway and the situation of the city, the publication is preceded by a 24-page text section, which initially shows the changes over the decades very well in five network maps and allows the photographs to be localised. The urban development and that of the tramway in the various political periods is described in detail. A trilingual index of street and square names in Polish, German and Ukrainian also helps with orientation. The picture section consists of almost 130 full-page illustrations, from the end of the 1970s in colour. The period up to the Second World War is documented with black and white pictures as well as coloured postcards. Between 1945 and 1977, however, no pictures could be found. The period of the Gotha trams is quite well represented, after it was possible to travel to the newly founded Ukraine without any problems from the beginning of the 1990s, a large part of the picture material comes from the time after that and shows the very beautiful city with trams of Czech origin (partly also used from Germany) and low-floor own developments. The quality of the pictures is good, both in terms of print and motif. Detailed captions provide information on locations and vehicles. The bibliography shows that there is literature on operation in German, Polish and Ukrainian, and internet sources are also mentioned. Anyone who needs more information beyond the contents of this well-designed book can therefore help themselves, but this publication also offers a rich presentation from a ‘different world’ and can be highly recommended to anyone interested in
Authors: Bernhard Duschek and Rudolf Koller
Publisher: Bahnmedien.at (Vienna)
144 pages in 24.0 x 24.0 cm format, hardcover
Price: 45,00 €
ISBN: 978 3903177642
05.01.2025
