Trams, trucks and taxis

Dodge truck, converted to bus.
    You know what they say about '50s Cadillacs. Seen one, you want to see them all!
    Still, there can be a predictable sameness to the transportation pictures many visitors bring back from Cuba. Chevies and Cadillacs. Bright-hued convertibles. Stately Studebakers. I've taken more than a few of these myself.
    To the car enthusiast, such subjects are always of interest. But at the same time, they do little to satisfy our human craving for the new and different (or, in Cuba's case, the old and different).
    Fortunately, some visitors have a different focus. Take the Russian website ymtram.mashke.org, whose authors dedicate themselves to the presentation of images of trams, trolleybuses and other systems of public transit around the world.
    In a section on Cuba, the site offers some 90 photographs of rail transport (including steam trains and diesel locomotives), buses and taxis. Here you find see such trophies as a Russian LAZ-699R bus collecting passengers in Sancti Spiritus, and a KAMAZ truck tractor (also Russian) towing a Hungarian Ikarus bus body.
    From, Manati, Las Tunas Province. is a shot of a horse-drawn fixed-route taxi delivering passengers to an intercity bus connection, and from Santiago de Cuba a photo of, yes, classic Ford and Chevy taxis lined outside a hotel. Captions, some quite detailed, are in Russian and English. A separate section provides extensive information on Cuba's Hershey electric railway that operates (sporadically) between Havana and Matanzas.
     Fans of trucks, trains and buses will find plenty to savour at the well-organized ymtram.mashke.org site. And even if your tastes run more to Plymouths and Packards, you could enjoy sampling this different fare.

Open-concept tractor wears a Kenworth badge, but its fenders look Russian.

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