Two weeks late, the pair of Swiss-made tram cars destined for use on the Portland Aerial Tram finally arrived in Portland on October 29, 2006.
The two tram cars that will be used to shuttle people back and forth from Oregon Health and Science University to the South Waterfront arrived on a large ship at the Port of Portland’s Terminal Six Sunday afternoon.
The journey for the cars started in Switzerland where they were fabricated.
The cars were originally scheduled to arrive in Portland the week of October 16th. Tram Project Manager, Rob Barnard, told KGW “The ship that they were on didn’t have a lot of freight for the Portland area. It was running late and they diverted to Canada where the majority of their shipment was.”
The cars were built by Bern, Switzerland based Gangloff Cabins.
The Portland Aerial tram officially opened to the public on January 27, 2007.
Photo credit: Tram photo by Wikipedia user Cacophony. Used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.
Let’s not forget the naming contest. Lots of great names submitted, but ultimately they chose the names of two honored (but totally obscure) students and nobody has referred to them by name since.