Sofia tram 2362 departs from the terminus at kv. Knyazhevo (кв. Княжево), working route 5 to Sadebna Palata (Съдебна Палата).
This was the second day of a six-day trip to Bulgaria, my first ever visit to the country. We'd flown from Stansted to Sofia the previous afternoon, and spent much of this day in Sofia before moving on to stay two nights in Vratsa (sometimes transliterated as Vraca), one night in Plovdiv, and one night in Velingrad after a day on the 125km-long Rhodope narrow gauge railway.
Today included some short rail journeys (as well as the longer one to Vratsa early in the evening), but we also travelled a few tram routes. It was a mostly cloudy day, but there was a brief spell of sunshine early in the afternoon; photography was limited to grab shots when and where I could.
Our two main aims regarding the tram system today were to ride route 22A, a 1,009mm gauge route which was replacing part of the standard gauge route 22 and doing three curves which otherwise would have no normal passenger service, and to do the route to Gara Sofia Sever (Sofia North Station), which had had a service reinstated only a year or so ago and some people thought might lose it again.
Having just done route 22A southbound, we continued to the end of the line (here) on route 11 (see
this photo taken just after arriving) and were then going to return the same way. Two trams were in front of ours on the balloon loop when we arrived, and the first departed fairly soon. With over ten minutes before the next route 11 departure, I nipped across the road to see if I could get a picture of this tram departing, intending to walk a short distance down the road - until I spotted the artwork on the end of the building. The road traffic was quite variable, with short periods of almost-stopped nose-to-tail vehicles and short periods when the road was clear; I was partly lucky when this tram set off as there was traffic passing but it was moving reasonably well, so I was able to get some shots between the vehicles - although I've used a small portion of the next frame in the burst to remove a car from the bottom right-hand corner.
Tram 2362 is a PESA "Swing" 122 NaSF2 car, built in 2023. Sofia's trams (and trolleybuses) are operated by Sofia Electric Transport Company JSC (Столичен електротранспорт ЕАД).
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