Transport Museum of Wiener Linien

The Verkehrsmuseum Remise der Wiener Linien (previously known as the Vienna Tram Museum until 2012) is a tram museum dedicated to public city transportation. It is the world’s biggest tram museum dedicated to public transportation in a single city.The Transport Museum’s collection is focused on providing the most comprehensive documentation of authentic historical tram vehicles and buses utilized in Vienna.The museum houses one of the world’s most comprehensive original collections of its sort.

The tram depot at Ludwig-Koeßler-Platz in Vienna’s 3rd district, Landstrasse, was in operation from 1901 to 1990.Line J, as well as line 18, used to run here; there was a track connection via the Stadionbrücke to lines 80 ( Rotundenbrücke – Prater, Lusthaus ) and the needed line 81 ( Rotundenbrücke – Freudenau Rennplatz ).At the height of tram traffic in Freudenau, dozens of trains could be hauled on a massive loop system “stack” to carry horse racing attendees.The depot was appropriately large.

The old depot is a listed monument, and the City of Vienna has classified it as a structural protection zone.

Until 2012, over 100 tram and electric tram cars were shown on 1,810 m of track on a 7,700 m2 space.The oldest exhibit is an 1868 horse-drawn tramway wagon.

Many of the museum’s vehicles have been preserved in functioning order in a specialized workshop area with four 232-meter-long tracks and an area of 900 square meters in order to be displayed in motion on important occasions.Over the last four decades, volunteers have restored and rebuilt several automobiles.

The dark green horse-drawn tramway wagon from 1868 and the set of the steam tramway company formerly Krauss & Comp. from 1885/1886, electrically powered tram and Stadtbahn cars from 1901 (the first electric line entered service in Vienna in 1897) to 1969, and a Dampfstadtbahn car are notable exhibits.Regular service buses dating back to 1949 are also on exhibit, including the “bus from the river,” which was on the Reichsbrücke when it collapsed on August 1, 1976, and was swept into the Danube with the bridge.The bus was in continuous operation after recovery and repairs until 1989.

The Vienna Tram Museum was closed for refurbishment in 2013.It reopened on September 13, 2014, as the depot – transport museum of the Wiener Linien, and now interactively and multimedialy records the whole city traffic.In accordance with Christian Rapp’s new museum idea, a subway vehicle was transported to the museum in the spring of 2014.

The exhibition hall is currently divided into 15 historically organized stations, each displaying small-scale items, historical images and movies, and other interactive features.For example, during the First World War, the extensive use of female tram drivers in Vienna was studied, and on the subject of the underground, a set of the U2 line was virtually controlled from the driver’s seat on its new above-ground line in the 22nd district to the Seestadt terminus.