Like most European countries, Belgium's main towns and cities developed
their own tramway networks. Those that survive today include Brussels,
Gent, Antwerpen and Charleroi. In the 1960s both French-speaking Liège
and Verviers lost their tramways, though there is a desire in Liège to
see it return. In addition to the city systems, there was a rural
network of mainly metre gauge tramways throughout the country known as
the Vicinal. Tony Martens, though born in Belgium, lived in the UK for
most of his life, but started revisiting the country in the 1960s,
photographing most of the surviving operations. John Law's first visit
to the country was in 1971, accompanying Tony in Brussels, where the
last of the Vicinal routes were still operating and four-wheeled trams
were running on the city streets. John has been returning to Belgium on
a regular basis ever since. Sadly, Tony Martens passed away in early
2019. Fortunately, John Law was able to gain access to Tony's slide
collection and, along with his own photographic work, has tapped into
this archive to bring you a photographic history of Belgium's trams and
trolleybuses from the mid-1960s to the present day.