Gent is a big city in the north western part of Belgium. It is the capitel of the province of Oost-Vlaanderen. Todays the city has about 260.000 inhabitants. Around 1880 there were onlys 130.000 inhabitants (although the area of the city was smaller than today).

In Gent the first horse tram was opened in 1874, a line from the station to the center of the city at the Korenmarkt. Later on some more horse trams were opend. The lines were laid with track width 1000 mm, like many other tramways in Belgium. To read more about the horse trams, visit my page about the horse tram in Gent.

In 1897 the consession for the lines was given to two companies linked to the RELSE (Liège). Both companies made a new company, the ETG "Elektrische Tramwegen van Gent" which started converting the horse tram into an electric tram. The electricity was aquired from accus in the tram cars. This technique was not enough developed and many problems arose. In 1903 the company replaced the accu by an overhead wire like in other cities.

There have been 11 lines in the past, of which today only 3 remained.

In Gent there were also lines of the NMVB. At first the lines of the NMVB ended at the outside of the city center. Later on lines were extended to the Sint Pieters railway station.

The evolution of the tram network in the city of Gent is too large to be described on this page. To read much more, you can visit the page of the Gentse tram on Wikipedia.