The Tram Depot on Strada Take Ionescu

The tram depot on Strada Take Ionescu is not a tourist attraction. It is a working shed where trams are inspected, repaired, and sent out to carry 180,000 passengers a day. We spent a morning shift with the workers who keep the network running.

The tram depot on Strada Take Ionescu is a low, long shed of grey concrete and corrugated metal, set behind a rusted gate. It does not announce itself. You would not stumble upon it. Trams enter and leave through a single track that crosses the pavement, and the only sign is a small plaque with the name of the depot in Romanian: Depoul de Tramvaie Timișoara. Inside, the air is thick with the smell of grease, ozone, and old upholstery. This is the nerve centre of the city's tram network, though it feels more like a workshop than a control room.

The depot operates around the clock. By the time the first service trams roll out at 4:30, the night shift has already inspected the rails and the overhead wires. The day shift begins at 6:00, when the maintenance workers clock in. They are a mix of electricians, mechanics, and bodyworkers, most of them men, many with decades of service. They wear blue overalls and carry toolboxes that look as old as the trams they fix. The depot is not a museum. It is a working facility, and the work is constant.

The Morning Shift Begins

At 6:15, the first tram of the morning is due for its daily inspection. It is a Armonia model, built in 2021 by Astra Vagoane Călători in Arad. The tram is 30 metres long, articulated, and painted in the city's colours: white and blue. It pulls into the inspection pit, a shallow trench that runs the length of the shed. The pit is lit by bare bulbs, and the underside of the tram is a maze of cables, pipes, and brake callipers. A mechanic named Ion descends into the pit with a torch. He checks the brake pads, the sanders, and the wheel flanges. He finds a worn brake pad on the second bogie and notes it on a clipboard. The tram will be taken out of service for the afternoon and the pad replaced. The morning shift is not about big repairs; it is about catching small faults before they become failures.

Ion has worked at the depot for 23 years. He started as an apprentice, cleaning the pits and handing tools to the older men. He has seen the fleet change from the old Timiș 2 trams, which were built in the 1970s and rattled like tin cans, to the new Armonia and the second-hand Siemens ULF trams bought from Vienna. The ULF trams are quiet and smooth, but they are not designed for Timișoara's tracks. The rails here are often poorly maintained, and the ULF trams have suffered from cracked wheels and suspension problems. Ion says the old Timiș 2 trams were simpler. You could fix them with a hammer and a wrench. The new ones need a laptop. He does not say this with nostalgia. He says it as a fact.

We are not a museum. We fix what we have, and what we have is a mix of old and new, and neither is perfect.

The depot employs 187 people. Of these, 98 are drivers, 54 are maintenance workers, and the rest are administrative staff. The maintenance workers are divided into three shifts: morning, afternoon, and night. The morning shift handles routine inspections and minor repairs. The afternoon shift tackles larger jobs, such as motor replacements and bodywork. The night shift does the heavy cleaning and the track inspections. The depot also has a small workshop for machining parts that are no longer manufactured. In one corner, a lathe from the 1960s is still in use. It is operated by a man named Vasile, who has been at the depot for 31 years. He makes bushings and pins for the older trams. Without him, those trams would be grounded. He is 58 years old and has no apprentice. When he retires, the lathe will likely fall silent.

The Daily Grind of Maintenance

By 7:30, the depot is in full swing. Trams come in for their scheduled inspections, and the pit is a flurry of activity. Two men are replacing a brake pad on a Armonia tram. Another is checking the pantograph, the device that connects the tram to the overhead wire. The pantograph is a fragile thing, and if it fails, the tram stops. The mechanic uses a multimeter to test the contact strips. He finds one worn down to the carbon. He replaces it. The job takes 20 minutes. In the meantime, a driver arrives to report a fault: the doors on the third carriage of her tram are not closing properly. A maintenance worker takes a look and finds a faulty sensor. He replaces it. The driver waits, drinking coffee from a thermos. She has been driving trams for 12 years. She says the new trams are easier to drive, but the old ones had more character. She does not miss the old ones.

The depot is not a clean place. There is oil on the floor, and the walls are stained with exhaust fumes. The toilets are basic, and the canteen is a small room with a microwave and a fridge. The workers bring their own food. At lunchtime, they sit at a long table and talk about football, politics, and the price of parts. The depot manager, a woman named Adriana, joins them. She has been in the job for five years. She says the biggest challenge is keeping the fleet running on a tight budget. The city council provides funding, but it is never enough. The depot has to prioritise. Safety-critical repairs come first. Cosmetic repairs can wait. She shows me a spreadsheet with the maintenance schedule. It is colour-coded: red for urgent, yellow for soon, green for routine. There is a lot of red.

The depot also houses the central control room for the tram network. It is a small room with a bank of monitors and a radio. The controller on duty is a man named Cristian. He has a map of the network on the wall, with little magnets representing each tram. He communicates with drivers by radio, and he can see their positions on a GPS screen. If a tram breaks down, he sends a maintenance crew. If there is an accident, he calls the police. He says the most stressful part of the job is when two trams are stuck behind a broken-down one. The passengers get impatient, and the drivers get frustrated. He has to keep calm and coordinate the recovery. He has been doing this for 15 years. He says he still enjoys it, but he would not recommend it to his son.

Riding the Morning Shift

At 9:00, I join a driver on her morning shift. Her name is Elena, and she has been driving trams for 8 years. She starts her shift at 5:00, so she has already done two round trips. Her tram is a Armonia, number 104. She checks the mirrors, the doors, and the brakes. She signs a form to say the tram is roadworthy. Then she releases the brake and pulls out of the depot. The tram crosses the pavement and turns onto Strada Take Ionescu. The street is lined with Communist-era apartment blocks, grey and crumbling. There are a few shops at ground level: a bakery, a pharmacy, a betting shop. The tram picks up speed. The ride is smooth, almost silent. Elena sits in a padded seat, her hands on a joystick. She does not steer; the tram follows the rails. She controls the speed and the doors. She watches the road ahead. She has to be ready for cars that ignore the tram signals, pedestrians who cross without looking, and cyclists who weave in and out.

The route takes us through the city centre, past the Orthodox Cathedral and the Opera House. The tram stops are busy. People get on and off. A man with a briefcase. A woman with a shopping trolley. Two teenagers with backpacks. A pensioner with a walking stick. Elena waits for them to sit down before she moves off. She says the most annoying thing is when people run for the tram and then stand in the doorway while they look for their ticket. She has to wait. If she closes the doors on them, she could get a fine. The tram is a public service, and the passengers are the public. Some of them are rude. Some of them are drunk. Some of them are homeless. She has seen it all. She once had a man pull the emergency brake because he had missed his stop. She had to call the control room and wait for the police. That was a bad day.

At the end of the line, in the Calea Aradului district, the tram turns around on a loop. Elena takes a 10-minute break. She walks to a kiosk and buys a coffee. She stands outside, smoking a cigarette. She says she likes the early shift because the roads are quiet, but she hates getting up at 3:30. She has two children, aged 12 and 9. Her husband works in a factory. They manage, but it is not easy. She earns 3,200 lei per month, which is about 650 euros. The average salary in Timișoara is around 4,500 lei. She says the pay is not great, but the job is secure. She has a pension to look forward to. She does not plan to leave. She stamps out her cigarette and gets back on the tram. The return trip is busier. The tram fills up. A group of schoolchildren in uniforms. A man selling flowers. A woman with a cat in a carrier. The tram rattles over a set of points that need repair. Elena notes it on a pad. She will report it at the end of her shift.

Back at the depot, the afternoon shift has taken over. The pit is occupied by a tram with a faulty motor. Two electricians are removing the motor. It is a heavy job, and they use a crane. The motor is sent to the workshop for rewinding. The depot does not have the equipment to rewind motors, so it sends them to a specialist firm in Bucharest. The turnaround is three weeks. In the meantime, the tram is out of service. The depot has 12 trams of this type, and three are currently awaiting motors. The shortage means that some services are cancelled. The passengers complain, but there is nothing the depot can do. The manager, Adriana, says the city needs to buy more trams, but the budget is stretched. She has asked for funding to refurbish the older trams, but it has not been approved. She says the depot is doing the best it can with what it has. She does not sound optimistic.

The depot is not a tourist attraction. There are no guided tours, no gift shop, no cafe. It is a place where people work, and where machines are repaired. It is essential to the city's transport, but it is invisible to most of the people who use it. The trams that roll out of the gate every morning are the public face of the depot. The workers who keep them running are the hidden mechanism. They are not heroes. They are just doing their jobs. But without them, Timișoara would stop moving. The tram network carries 180,000 passengers a day. That is a lot of people who depend on a shed on Strada Take Ionescu. The shed is old, the equipment is worn, and the future is uncertain. But for now, the trams keep coming and going, and the workers keep fixing them, one brake pad at a time.