His wagons were always distinguished by season – What was his route
The few living inhabitants must go back in time and recall memories and images Volos who may still have memories of the streetcars rolling noisily on the iron rails and crossing the whole city from end to end and of course carrying thousands of people, when cars were few and far between.
The tram was the main means of transport for Volos which, in the last century, was an economically prosperous city with the country’s largest port after Piraeus as well as a railway connection with the North and the South. It was the city that had a rapid and dynamic industrial, economic and social development after the liberation of Thessaly from the Ottomans in 1881.
Characteristic of the great development of Volos was the fact that from 1884 the operation of the Thessalian Railway began and in 1894 the famous train of Pelion whistled for the first time and began to climb the green slopes of the mountain of the Centaurs.
The Thessalian railway and the Pelion train pass through the center of the city and on these lines the tram also begins to move and Volos had the privilege of being crossed by three different means of fixed track, three types of carriages being available, in three different line widths. The international line, the Thessalian metric line and the Pelion train line with a width of only 0.60 cm.
That tram in essence, it was the Pelion train that from 1898 ran from the Volos Railway Station and followed the route through Dimitriados Avenue and then through today’s Nikolaou Plastira, reaching Anauros to travel an absolute urban route that played primary role in the development of the city towards its south-southeast and coastal area.
The steam railway of that time, with the engine in front emitting black smoke from the much coal it used to move, passed through the whole center and made stops at the pastry shop of Chalkiadopoulos (near the old Theatre), in Iolkos, at the old City Hall , reached the “Beauty Club” and continued towards Agios Konstantinos, the Kapourniotis Mills, the “Achillopoulio” Hospital, the Archaeological Museum and ended in Anauros where the whole town went to enjoy the sea baths and swim.
In Volos, the operation of the tram was always adventurous and its operation was with long interruptions. Characteristically, it worked from 1898 until October 31, 1939 without interruption and during the German occupation it worked again in 1942 and continued until 1948 when it stopped again to make another attempt in 1949 to keep it alive, which is completed definitively at the end of 1950, when the competition with cars was already unbearable for a means of transport that remained in another era and never passed the phase of electrification.
The tram of Volos was not like the trams of other European cities, but something special, a Greek patent and something between a train and a means of transport for an amusement park and features were written by the great journalist Takis Oikonomakis in the newspaper “Thessalia” of Volos on November 1, 1939 that “…Foreigners passing through our city burst out laughing when they saw it. They took it for a toy, so small as it was, and wondered how people could travel with it. But their question was resolved if they entered it, for a ride. Then realizing that this little railway with its antiquated appearance was not at all useless. Despite his appearance he served the people a lot. It could carry hundreds of passengers if the need arose, as was the case on summer Sundays with Anavros. Thus the mood of the foreigners changed to sympathy…” (Takis Oikonomakis, 1/11/1939, “Thessalia”)
The Volos tram then had a second line, only 0.60 cm wide, which connected the station with the port and crossed the entire waterfront and reached the current Central Port Authority.
The photos that exist are scarce since almost all of them captured the train of Pelion and not the steam tram, which, however, was only slightly different from its great “cousin” that reached Agria, Lechonia and went up to Milies.
However, the tram cars always stood out depending on the season. Closed wagons in winter without heating of course, while in summer the wagons were open without side curtains.
The 92-year-old today Yannis Ganotis speaking to APE-MPE remembers that “during the Occupation, we kids used to run and speed the tram which was very slow moving and the prize for the winner was to get into an open carriage and make fun of the others of the company. We usually reached Anavros with a lot of smudges on our faces and hands. But those were good times. We lived in a wonderful Volos and the tram of the time was a special means of transport since there were almost no cars and there was also the fear of the German invaders”.
There have been thoughts about the revival of the tram in the capital of Magnesia as recently as 1993, when on the initiative of the Volos Municipal Research and Construction Company and the Trans-European Research Office EuroTrans consulting, a proposal was submitted to the ECOS Ouverture Community program for the exchange of experience in matters of urban transport, and specifically in the development of fixed-track means in medium-sized cities, between the Municipality of Volos and the sister city of Le Mans in France and was approved by the European Commission, where the proposal for Volos provided for a preliminary feasibility study to investigate the creation of a tram network perhaps the first in a city outside of Athens.
