Pâncota station(Arad county,Romania), the place where the electric tramway used to stop 50 years ago
First of all I want to tell you that this is my first post here in the community, I hope its content is according to the rules of this community.
There are many places that I like to visit either because they are well known or because they are less touristy and on my way to these objectives I pass by many buildings that I do not give importance to and because most of them are abandoned or in a state of advanced degradation (here I mean buildings or even bridges over rivers, schools, kindergartens).
Discovering this wonderful community and seeing the content on which it is based I decided to give it a try by sharing such a place with you.
Today I want to visit together a former train station and a depot of the electric tramway that used to run here decades ago, I've been asking locals around the area some details about this place and I really started to like playing detective to find out some information.
It is about Pancota Station, this place is very controversial, there have been all kinds of individuals in charge who tried to come up with a better vision for this station but instead did nothing but to close it and later remain abandoned.
Yes, this place has not functioned as a train station since 1991 since then it lies abandoned, I know the building looks very good if we were to calculate how many years it was built.
The electric tramway connected communes in the wine-growing area in western Romania with a town Lipova on the river Mures.
This tram also had a name, the Green Arrow, the older generations have all heard and even commuted with this tram.
Along these communes there were tram lines specially created for it, having a smaller gauge compared to a normal train.
Today those tram lines no longer exist, they have been sold to scrap metal collectors and eventually melted down.
Luckily for us, a wagon of this Green Arrow was restored 5 years ago and since then it is also abandoned in a depot in Ghioroc.
This depot is very close to me and I wanted to show you what this Green Arrow looks like but unfortunately every time I've been there I've found the doors closed (but I'm not giving up until I take some pictures there).
Let's go back to Pancota station, the building looks very good on the outside, you wouldn't say it's so old, only on the inside it looks worse, it's a building from the communist period typical of that period, over the years here the people of the street have been living here and have destroyed the place even more.
The building has an attic but to be honest I didn't have the courage to climb that ladder into the attic, there was no guarantee.
I leave you some pictures of the electricity poles of the network that I found on the route of this tram, some poles were made of hardwood and others of iron, very interesting were also the street light bulbs compared to those existing today.
I can't figure out how this iron post escaped being cut up and sold to the smelter.
We leave the Pancota station behind and go a few hundred meters and find the depot of these trams, it can accommodate several trams, here we find a building that had two very large entrances.
It seems that over time one of the entrances was bricked up, probably to close the depot as well as the Green Arrow trail.
Today the depot looks like after the war everything that could be stolen from there was stolen leaving only the bare walls, you can imagine that a hundred years ago it was equipped with all the necessary equipment for maintenance and occasional repairs of the tram.
Somewhere in the back you can see Pâncota station, where I was earlier, and further back you can already see a housing estate.
Could this have been the reason for the closure of the line?
That we will never know.
I have an emptiness in my heart when I think that this tram of today could have been used for tourist purposes, walking through the vineyards of the west of the country, we could have seen the hills full of vines, we could have seen the communities it passes through, but unfortunately these are only in my mind.
Once again I hope this content is appropriate in this community, I welcome any suggestions or advice from you on this.
If you liked what you saw and read here please don't forget to give a LiKe, Follow, reBlog or a Comment, for all this I thank you, and until the next post I say goodbye.
P.S. The attached pictures you have just seen are taken by me with my mobile phone, and the text is also designed by me.
