Mulhouse used to be a busy port - not a lot of people know that. If you are driving your big cargo boat along the Rhine (southbound - more correctly the Canal d'Alsace) you can turn right at the delightfully named Niffer ...
From the Streetview views there isn't so much activity these days but it was a busy old place not that long ago.
Further inland, the Canal Rhine Rhône narrows and passes, almost unseen, in front of Mulhouse Railway Station where park some of the many leisure boats.
But, before getting upstream as far as this idyllic scene, there is a canal branch. You can guess that the old harbour near the station was not big enough for the increasing size of vessels, so the branch leads to a larger harbour area called the Nouveau Bassin ...
... seen here diagonally bottom left to top centre. The station is bottom right.
This man made "pond" now forms a picturesque park ...
... and just one road away is the terminus of tram line 2 at a stop called "Nouveau Bassin".
It is next to shopping facilities and a large multi-screen cinema. There is a long turn-back siding ...
With trams running on grassed reserved track ...
... there are just two stops before we reach the Porte Jeune interchange.
Soon the paved areas with limited access to other vehicles give way to grass again for the oil-drum sheep.
Then line 3 peels off northbound via a splendid wiggle to run alongside the SNCF railway line ...
... whilst line 2 continues its superb way ...
... to its western terminus at Coteaux. It gets there by swinging left off its reservation in the centre of a wide ring road ...
... to terminate plumb in the centre of a forest of tower blocks.
As you might hear in a "spectacle de Guignol"...
... "C'est le façon de le faire!"
Lines 1 and 3 tomorrow
Next Magnifique blog : Thursday 31st January
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