History
Stuttgart Stadtbahn, now all standard gauge (1435 mm), has been developed out of a traditional tramway system, which in Stuttgart had metre gauge. In 1961 the city council of Stuttgart decided a general modernization of the municipal tram system; in central areas, the tram should be led underground, in peripheral areas it should get new tracks, separate from road traffic. Intercurrent ideas for a totally new subway were rejected in 1976. At the same time it was decided to enhance modernization of the existing tram in combination with a change from metre gauge to standard gauge. For this reason, Stuttgart made the intermediate effort of rebuilding almost all its tracks with mixed-gauge, on which old streetcars (SSB GT4, built 1959–1965) could run as well as new metro cars (SSB DT 8, in regular service since 1985).
Read more about this topic: Stuttgart Stadtbahn
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of the prophets. He saw with an open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history he estimated the greatness of man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)