Book: Lille tram line T with railcar 511, the back Tourcoing (1995)The Mongy, Northern Tramway.
Lille - Roubaix - Tourcoing.
For the people of northern France, the Mongy is much more than just a tram: it's a character in its own right, having been a part of life in this major city for 85 years.
Tram enthusiasts, for their part, will see the Lille - Roubaix - Tourcoing Electric Tramway (ELRT) as one of the three networks that survived the rise of the bus in the post-war years.
But in this book, both groups will learn that the Mongy was first and foremost the central element of an unprecedented urban planning project that gave birth to the grand boulevards.
Closer to our time, in 1950, the famous 500 series trams propelled the network to the rank of the most modern and fastest tramway in France.
These superlatives, once challenged by the high level of technology in the newly built tram networks in other cities since 1985, are now being reclaimed: since last autumn, a fully modernized Mongy tram has been running along the boulevards, with its superb articulated Breda trams.
In this book, Gérard Blondeau, a tram enthusiast from birth and a lifelong resident of Lille, recounts the history of the Mongy in great detail...
...The most modern of the "classic" trams!By Henrik Boye, La Régordane -
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