Life in Colour

To find out more about this year’s photo challenge here on Travel Words, please read this post.

This week I am going to look at transport, including another of those wonderful streetcars from San Francisco. But we’ll begin with this lovely traditional Maltese bus.  The old Malta buses were really something truly unique and one of the most recognisable icons of Malta. The last of these old Maltese buses were yellow in colour with an orange horizontal stripe and their Gozitan counterparts grey coloured with a red horizontal stripe. The vast majority of the buses started and ended their trips at the main terminus in Valletta with a few operating on circular routes. Sadly these were phased out in 2011.

Milan, Italy 1856, built in 1928 and still operational. The second most common type of streetcar in Muni’s historic fleet is an American classic with an Italian accent. This type of car is named for Cleveland street railway commissioner Peter Witt, who designed it for his Ohio city around 1915. The concept was to speed loading by putting the conductor in the middle of the car, letting crowds board through the front door and paying as they passed the conductor. The design was also exported to world cities such as Toronto, Mexico City, Madrid, and three Italian cities, Naples, Turin, and Milan where they still operate today.

(In the 1970s, the Milan tram fleet was repainted a solid orange, the livery worn by the remainder of Muni’s Milan trams)

If you want to learn more about San Francisco’s historic streetcars and cable cars then please visit the Market Street Railway Museum.

Do you have any orange Transport?