Evening all!

As I'm having a weekend off, I thought I might begin filling this blog with some content, and start with a bit of an illustration of how my decision to re-orient myself professionally for essentially reasons of personal sanity and the preservation thereof – which some of you reading this may already know about in some more detail – took shape over the course of this summer!

The short version is, I had signed up for a posting as a tram driver with our local public transport operator Leipziger Verkehrsbetriebe, starting on 1 June this year. Of course, this meant that, as part of a group of eight, I first need to complete driver training. Here, two weeks of depot service for introduction and three weeks of theoretical instruction were followed by seven weeks of practical driving training, which I successfully concluded with the driving exam on 25 August. This, in turn, was followed by 35 revenue shifts with two senior drivers functioning as operations trainers at my side, the goal here being to further improve driving skills and to learn the finer points of driving with passengers.

So, may I perhaps just offer a collection of photos I took during my driving instruction to give you an overview of what tram operations in this city are like!

The week from 20 till 24 July was filled with night time driving training, with this time of day offering additional possibilities for practising running with simulated malfunctions. During the night from 21 to 22 July, NGT12 car 1231 "Bielefeld" is seen here during our break in the stabling sidings on Kurt-Schumacher-Straße on the west side of Leipzig Central Station. The through tracks in the background are used by Lines 9, 10, 11 and 16 in revenue service.

One night before, we had been driving a "tract", meaning a double unit, of NGT6 "Leoliner" cars, and stopped over in the Gerhard-Ellrodt-Straße loop in the borough of Großzschocher, off what is Line 3 in revenue service. Our formation consisted of 1340 "Meusdorf" and 1332 "Leutzsch".

In addition to the 48 production cars, we also continue to operate the two NGT6 prototypes, which were approximated to the production cars during their first revision but are still sufficiently different to the latter to warrant separate instruction. Here, 1301 is seen at the Naunhofer Straße loop at the east end of Line 2.

We also had taken 1301 to the reversing triangle at Herrmann-Meyer-Straße, off Line 1.

Aboard 1302, one stopover had been at the Meusdorf loop, which is the regular southern end of Line 15 and also served by Line 2 during peak hours. The NGT6 prototypes are not named.

NGT12 car 1215 "Addis Abeba" is seen here in the reversing triangle at Lützschena off the northern branch of Line 11 to the outlying town of Schkeuditz, one of the various auxiliary reversing spots which continue to prove useful in the event of route closures caused by disruptions of any kind, or by engineering works.

Aboard 1205 "Hannover", we had taken a break at the Eutritzsch, Krankenhaus loop off Line 16. This location had – matching the destination signage we put on temporarily for this commemorative photo – indeed been served by Line 14 till 2008, but not with NGT12 cars.

The NGT8 type cars are a typical 1990s design. Here, we had stopped over at the Sellerhausen loop rounding Emmaus Church, driving 1133 "Christian Thomasius" that day.

The single dedicated driver training car in our inventory is 5001, one of the lot of refurbished Tatra T4D-MC cars originally produced by Czechoslovakian builder CKD during the GDR era. Here, we had paid a visit to the Museum Depot in the borough of Möckern, off Georg-Schumann-Straße.

As a summarising comment from my point of view, I'd first like to mention that I could not find any fault with the extent and thoroughness of LVB driver training, and would definitely like to commend the dedication demonstrated by everyone involved with our instruction and ops training. I certainly felt well prepared when I passed my driving exam and commenced ops training on 26 August, and even more so when I subsequently completed the latter and could pick up my certification card (or driver's licence, if you will) on 29 October.

I am, of course, happy to answer any questions you might have, of course emphasising that I will take care to apply common sense in everything I write, and reveal no information I might know to be sensitive in any way and which might go significantly beyond information that could be retrieved from openly accessible sources – whether in print or electronic, and however technical in nature – in any case.

My goal, if you will, is to simply illustrate the workings of public transport in general and trams according to German regulations in particular from my personal point of view. To this end, I also elected to make this blog accessible only for registered users as an additional safeguard.

Cheers,

Dom