largest French network), Lyon, Marseille, Nantes, Strasbourg, Grenoble, Montpellier, Saint-Étienne and Besançon. Since the 1990s, tram systems have been introduced, or expanded, in twenty-seven towns and cities. Many experiments, such as ground level power supply in Bordeaux, avoiding the need for overhead line equipment, or trolleybus-tram-BRT hybrids in Nancy and Caen with Bombardier Guided Light Transit. Smaller cities like Avignon are now running tram lines too. Germany Tramways in Germany served as the primary means of urban transport until the early 1960s when they were systematically replaced by buses. Tramways begun to reappear in the 1980s, before once again becoming a modern means of public transport in the 1990s. Popular notions of fashion have been used by scholars to explain this cycle of acceptance, rejection and restoration. Germany (where tramways are called Straßenbahn, meaning street railway) is notable for its large numbers of extensive tram systems, although even in this country many systems were closed after the Second World War, such as the tramway in Hamburg which last ran in 1978. Following the renaissance of trams in France and positive experience with tram-train and similar concepts (e.g. the Karlsruhe model), most German tramways are expanding, including new systems in cities that had previously abandoned them or entirely new systems in cities without any tram history. Light rail in Germany Stadtbahn, literally city railway in the German language, is the term for light rail in Germany and is the predecessor of the North American light rail. Most German light rail systems were started in the 1960s and 1970s with the intention of establishing full-scale underground, or U-Bahn (short for Untergrundbahn) systems. By the 1980s virtually all cities had abandoned these plans due to the high costs of converting tramways, and the most common systems are a mixture of tramway-like operations in suburban areas, with U-Bahn style operation, featuring underground stations, in the city centre areas. Greece Trams were the main mode of mass transportation in Athens and Thessaloniki before World War II. The first trams in Athens began operating in 1882. They were light vehicles drawn by three horses running on an extensive network throughout the city centre and a line reaching the suburb of Faliro. After the German occupation, the tramways began to decline, with lines gradually abandoned and replaced by trolleybuses, considered more appropriate and agile for the urban environment at that time. It is frequently mentioned somehow poetically