Westbahnstrasse Tram Track Rehabilitation Project

Summer 2009

This website presents photos and movies from the reconstruction of the tram (streetcar) tracks on Westbahnstrasse in Vienna Austria. The photos were taken between July 30 and August 25.

The project was fascinating to watch, especially for a civil engineer. I thought others might like to see what goes into building and maintaining track for an urban streetcar system, and therefore created this webpage.

On one of my photo taking excurisions I talked with the owner of the neighborhood ice cream store. He told me that they did the exact same process 25-years ago ... and complained that they should not need to do it "so often"!

Here are links to my Westbahnstrasse tram reconstruction project photo pages:

All photos are available on my flickr set Westbahnstr Tram Track Renewal

Here's a (somewhat artistic - at least for engineers - photo of a) pile of the new rail waiting to be installed in the street.

More artistic photos are at Artistic Photos.

New rails for Westbahnstrasse, August 2009

Here are a few more photos and then links to pages with more photos.

Here's what the track and street looked like before they started working. Not too shabby, but notice the grass and small broken corner. While the surface looks passable, often the track (and road) substructure needs repair and the tracks themselves need to be replaced.

In several sections of the street they tore out the entire street to the dirt level. The finished street is about 2-feet of concrete and tracks above the dirt. They worked block by block: two blocks were taken to dirt level, in the first block they only went to the "sub" street level.

The track is all welded, which makes the ride much smoother. The welding process provided some great photos and movies. Welding was done in some sections by the subcontractors (shown in this photo) and in other sections by the Wiener Linien crew (the Wiener Linien have their own 'welding truck' with all the equipment in the back of the truck (photo coming).

Welding the new rail on Westbahnstrasse, August 2009

Please add your comments to my blog article on the Westbahnstrasse Tram Track Rebuild.