Roger Farnworth Railways

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The Modern Tramway Journal After WW2 and into 1960s
The Modern Tramway – March 1951 – Tramways in Valencia

Among other items of international news in the March 1951 issue of The Modern Tramway, was a short series of notes culled from the Spanish magazine, ‘Ferrocarriles y Tranvias’

The featured image for this article shows two different trams operating on the modern Tramway network in Valencia: a Series 3800 on the right and a Series 4200 on the left.

The Modern Tramway reported:

“A recent issue of the Spanish monthly ‘Ferrocarriles y Tranvias’ contains interesting news from the town of Valencia. The Compañia de Tranvias y Ferrocarriles de Valencia [CTFV], which operates about 50 route miles of metre gauge tramways and some electric railways, has recently acquired certain Italian patents relating to articulated tramcars, and a start has been made in rebuilding the medium-age 4-wheel tramcars to articulated units with a suspended central unit, as in Rome and Milan. The two 4-wheel cars and the central section form a unit capable of transporting 120 who enter by the rear platform and leave by the centre or front: all entrances/exits are provided with power-operated folding doors, worked by the driver and conductor from their respective seats. These unidirectional articulated sets are numbered from 501 upwards, and are intended for service on certain town routes such as the recently extended Ruzafa-Mislata line, where the curves and restricted clearances in the city centre prevent the use of the modern 400-class bogie cars. These also deserve mention: they have been constructed locally, some of them since 1946, and are single-ended, with doors on one side only: some, however, have the doors on the left, ie. off-side, and others on the right, as usual on the Continent. The explanation is that the former batch of cars are used on Valencia’s circular route No. 5, which is provided throughout with central loading islands placed between the tracks. We believe this is the only case of its kind; Brussels has some centre islands, as did Manchester at one point, but in these cases the cars are (or were) running on the ‘wrong’ side of the road, against the traffic whereas the Valencia cars are on their correct side of the road.” [1: p66-67]

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2026/05/14/the...-valencia/