About this journey

The ride begins at Infante station, the riverside terminus that has anchored Porto's tram network since 1872, when a mule-drawn service first connected this quayside point with Foz do Douro. Electric traction arrived in 1895, the last mule car was retired in 1904, and by 1914 steam working in the city had been eliminated as well. The municipal operator STCP took over the system in 1946 and runs it still.

Line 1 follows the northern bank of the River Douro westward from Infante, calling at Alfândega and Massarelos before reaching Passeio Alegre in Foz do Douro. At Massarelos, the route passes the old central power plant that now houses the Porto Tram Museum, inaugurated in May 1992 and preserving sixteen electric cars. The tram making this journey, STCP #220, belongs to the Brill-28 class — cars built between 1912 and 1946 in the CCFP and STCP workshops — and is one of the vintage tramcars that today operate all three surviving Porto heritage lines on 30-minute headways. The network once reached 81 kilometres of route with 150 kilometres of track by 1949; decades of contraction reduced it to 14 kilometres and 16 trams by 1996, leaving Line 1 as the living core of what remains.