World's longest Tramcar

At a lenght of 54 meters, the Siemens Combino Plus, or as the Budapest Transport Company calls it, the Combino Supra, is the world's longest tram car. The official type designation is NF12, NF standing for niederflur (low floor) and 12 for twelve axles. The last of the 40 trains was delivered in 2007, with all being used exclusively on the lines 4 and 6.

I don't like it.

First of all, the entire Combino family is flawed, due to engineers using calculation methods that are valid for classic high-floor trams, but not for low-floor ones, which have all heavy equipment on the roof. As a result, cracks started to appear in the aluminium body, affecting rolling stock from several cities. This is now known as the "Combino Crisis", and Siemens had to make repairs to avoid structural failures, since they couldn't rule out a collapse of the roof.

Luckily, the Budapest variety is different from the rest, as they used stainless steel for the body, rather than aluminium. All the other disadvantages remained however. Due to the low floor construction, the wheels don't have axles, but are built into the sides of each segment. This means that even on straight tracks, the ride is very bumpy, as the typical sinusoidal run that automatically centers rail vehicles can't be achieved. Naturally, that increases wear on the rails, as well as the wheels. There were other problems at the beginning such as trams just stopping for no apparent reason, door malfunctions, and rusted catenary poles toppling, due to the higher amount of force generated by the single arm pantographs. Though the latter is due to improper maintenance, and not really the Combino's fault.

Then there's the livery, a banana-yellow, rather than the classic Budapest yellow & white with a brown decor band in between. Till now, most trams in this city were exclusively made for it, you wouldn't find a GANZ UV or the more modern ICS anywhere but in Budapest. The Combino however was not just designed in a modular one-tram-fits-all approach, but also has a very high recognition value. It's supposed to have a characteristic front, which you will easily recognize, once you see it again.

Dunno whether that works for everyone else. Personally, I can't stand this plastic nose, no matter whether I see it in Basel or Budapest. It almost seems to me like the old trams that didn't have any "designer" working on it looked better, albeit more utilitarian, than the Combino's cheap ass smiley face.

At least it looks better than it's horrific cousin from Düsseldorf...