[Eugen1985]

Hello to everyone on this forum. My name is Eugen and I live in Denmark but originally I come from Moldova, a former soviet country situated between Romania and Ukraine. Within cities Moldova has 2 kinds of public transport buses and trolleybuses. Today Moldova has 4 trolleybus cities: Chisinau, Balti, Tiraspol and Bender. The last 2 cities are situated on the other side of Moldova called Tranistria which is a break away republik, oficially still a part of Moldova. Chisinau, the capital of Moldova which I come from had also trams. Sadly during the second World War the tramway network was heavily damaged. After the war it was decided to replace the trams with trolleybuses and the first trolleybus route opened in 1949.

Today Chisinau has the biggest trolleybus network in Moldova with 32 trolleybus routes and a fleet of over 300 trolleybuses distributed over 3 trolleybus depots which serves various parts of the city. The company which operates the trolleybus network is state - owned. Various types of trolleybuses are in daily service, both traditional trolleybuses and newer lowfloor trolleybuses which are wireless and can work both with and without overhead wires. With this generation of the newest lowfloor trolleybuses it has been possible to expand the network to the parts of the city were there are no overhead wires but also to connect Chisinau to neighbouring villiages. Like for example the trolleybus route 30 which connects Chisinau to Chisinau International Airport. In addition to the new lowfloor trolleybuses, several second hand lowfloor trolleybuses have been aquirred from various countries like Latvia, Switzerland and Austria.

Most of the models of the trolleybuses in service are lowfloor. However a few older highfloor trolleybuses are also in service like for example the YUMZ T2 trolleybuses.

In addition Chisinau has also 2 museum trolleybuses which are preserved in working condition. And there are also plans to preserve a model of each trolleybus for the museum as well in the future after retirement from service, of the models of trolleybuses which are in service today. Chisinau has also a small transportation museum located in Trolleybus Depo number 4 which was once a tram depo and is used now for assembling new trolleybuses and to repair and modernize older trolleybuses. The museum is free of charge and worth visiting. From next year there are plans to remove all the museum trolleybuses which are now stored in various trolleybus depots, to this depo next to the museum.

During the years and recently in 2023 I was on vacation in Moldova and I have various pictures of both buses and trolleybuses in Chisinau, Moldova which are mine and which I want to share on this forum. I hope it will be interesting for other people to read. I have also pictures of buses from Chisinau and other transportation pictures from other countries which I visited which I will also upload on this forum but I will make other threads for this.

Questions are always welcome :-)