Tag Archives: Brussels

The Royal District of Brussels

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As promised in my Rail Photo of the Month for November 2019, I am highlighting another photo from Brussels.  The tram seen here is the same one as in my last post, but now we are looking at the rear of the tram after it passed my vantage point in Place Royal.  You can read more about this specific tram in the post linked above.

La Brugeoise 6-axle PCC tram 7824

The Place Royal was constructed between 1775 and 1782.  Originally, the square was the site of the market that was adjacent to the former Palace of Coudenberg.  The Palace de Coudenberg burned down in February of 1731, and funds were not available to reconstruct the area for 40 years.  Today, some of the most significant museums in the entire city, including the Musical Instruments Museum and the BELvue Museum are located in the vicinity of this square.  Having only about 8 hours total on my layover between flights at the Brussels Airport on this particular day, I visited these museums due to my interest in their collections and proximity to each other, the Grand Place, and the Brussels-Central Station. Conveniently enough, tram tracks also run through the square and the notable architecture in and along the streets that converge here make for some interesting photography opportunities.

For starters, the tram tracks divide in order to ring the statue of Godfrey of Bouillon, who led the first crusade in 1096.  To the right of the tram, we can see the Hôtel des Brasseurs, which now houses part of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium.  Looking down towards the south and the background of the picture, some of the building facades along Rue de la Régence, a main thoroughfare are visible.  The Rue de la Régence leads to the Palais de Justice.  At the time of its construction in 1883, it was the largest building in the world and it remains one of the most visible landmarks in the city due to its size.

Rail Photo of the Month: November 2019

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La Brugeoise PCC tram 7824

La Brugeoise PCC Tram 7824

Location: Rue Royale at Place des Palais, Brussels, Belgium
Operator of Vehicle: Brussels Intercommunal Transport Company
Date of Photo: November 21, 2013

Six years ago this month, I made my second visit (and first planned visit) to Brussels.  The story of my first visit to Brussels is probably best told in its own post, but the short version is that I had 90 minutes to kill due to a missed connection between the Thalys and ICE trains there in June 2008.  This made my second visit seem like an eternity in comparison, a whole eight hours between flights when traveling from Portugal to Israel.  As a result of having such an extended period of time in which to explore the city, I was able to see more than just the trams that happened to pass through the area by Gare du Midi. Here is one of the photos I took that day, of a PCC tram built by La Brugeoise, a Belgian train manufacturer, in the 1970s.  Although La Brugeoise has since been bought out by Bombardier, these PCC trams continue to serve the Belgian capital today.

If all goes to plan, I will make two additional posts about my visits to Brussels later this month.  

For more photos of trams in Brussels, please click here.

 

Where Do Your Eyes Wander?

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Bombardier Flexity Outlook “Cityrunner” 3069 on Rue Royale at Warandeberg, Brussels, Belgium, November 21, 2013

When taking a transit photo, sometimes the goal can be to take a picture of the vehicle and just the vehicle, as explained in the explanation of Types of Transit Photos.  However, sometimes a transit photo can be taken with a background that takes the viewer’s attention away from the vehicle in the photo.  For example, in the photo above, are your eyes supposed to focus on the tram as it comes down the street, the buildings lining the street to the right, or the Saint Jacques-sur-Coudenberg Church and other buildings in the background?  On the two occasions I’ve found myself in downtown Brussels, I’ve found many opportunities to get photos such as this one, where the “focus” of the photo is hard to pin down.  While the tram is certainly what initially inspired the photo, there is certainly much more to see here than the vehicle itself.  What are your eyes drawn to when you see this photo?

New Arrivals

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Over the course of redesigning Oren’s Transit Page, I was also continuing to travel, take photos, and add them in to the queue to be included in the redesigned website once it launched.  Now that the redesigned website is here, keep reading to find out what new material was added in conjunction with the redesign.  This isn’t an exhaustive list but rather just the “highlights”, there is plenty of new content scattered around the whole site.

NABI 60-BRT 9574 on Main Street at Aliso Street
Los Angeles, CA
July 11, 2014

Starting off in the United States, I traveled to a number of places for the first time in my life in 2014.  I made a Midwest swing in May 2014 that resulted in the creation of sections for Minneapolis-St. Paul (just prior to the Green Line opening) and Kansas City.  After that, in July 2014, I did some long distance Amtrak travel (with some flights in between) and visited Los Angeles and San Diego for the first time.  Also on this trip were stops in Denver (in time for the soft reopening of Denver’s Union Station), Chicago, and San Francisco.  I had passed through Denver before but I had never used or photographed its mass transit prior to that summer.  The stops in Chicago and San Francisco were my first in each city since 2007 and were quite brief, but there are new photos in those sections as well, including my first photos of the CTA 5000 Series cars.

The Washington, DC section now includes photos of some of the newer buses to ply the region’s streets, such as WMATA’s New Flyer XDE40 buses and Ride On’s Gillig Advantage/CNG buses.  On the rail side of things, there is now a gallery for photos of the new WMATA 7000 Series railcars, manufactured by Kawasaki.

PCC 3263 at Capen Street
Milton, MA
May 2, 2011

I last traveled to Philadelphia in 2012 and was able to get a last round of Silverliner II and Silverliner III photos, in addition to my first Silverliner V photos.  I made two trips to Boston, one in 2011 and the other in 2013.  On the 2011 trip, I rode the southern end of the Orange Line for the first time, and both trips included a number of trips on the Green Line and Red Line.  I also was able to get photos from along the Ashmont-Mattapan High Speed Line right of way and of various MBTA buses, including the trackless trolleys, in Cambridge.  Finally, for the first time since Oren’s Transit Page’s initial launch over 15 years ago, there are new photos in the Atlanta section.

There are also new photos from New York City, but due to the immense size of that section, it was decided to leave it “as is” in the old format and add the new photos to the Uncaptioned Photos gallery for now.  The New York section will be updated with the new design as soon as possible.

North of the border, there is a new section for photos from Niagara Falls, Ontario.  My only trip to South America to date was in 2010 so there isn’t anything new in the Brazil and Argentina sections (while Buenos Aires is on my bucket list, I haven’t found the occasion to get myself down there just yet).

Crossing the ocean to Europe, I visited both Hungary and Portugal for the first time.  My stop in Budapest was a layover between flights in 2011 that was measured in hours rather than days, but it was enough time to photograph some of the city’s trams, buses, and trolleybuses and whet my appetite for another trip there that will be longer 13 hours. I spent almost a full week in Lisbon, a city that shares many similarities to San Francisco including the fact that its trams are a tourist attraction in and of themselves, and visited continental Europe’s westernmost bus stop for good measure.

Bombardier Flexity Outlook “Cityrunner” 3069 at Place Royale
Brussels, Belgium
November 21, 2013

In 2008, I unexpectedly found myself with 90 minutes in Brussels due to a missed train connection, which was just enough time to get some transit photos before the next train to my destination came.  In 2013, I was in Brussels yet again, this time for a full 8 hours between flights, so that section has seen some additional expansion including a new gallery for photos of the Belgian National Railway.

Finally, in the Middle East, the Israel section has expanded further and to my knowledge, Oren’s Transit Page’s Israel section is the largest of its kind on any English language website.  The Jerusalem Light Rail opened to passengers just after I began the long process of overhauling the website, so many photos of revenue service along the length of the entire line are now included on the site.  The Metronit bus rapid transit system in the Haifa region opened in 2014, and there are also photos of that.  In addition, there are many new photos of the many bus operators that operate throughout the entire length of the country.

I hope you enjoy exploring the site, whether you choose to browse the new sections, old sections, or a mix of both!  And if you have a favorite section, let everyone know what it is in the comment section below!