Germany Celebrates The world's oldest still-operating suspended monorail

[Ichingcarpenter]

OK, I thought I would include this picture of a repugican.


The Althoff Circus orchestrated a publicity stunt by putting an elephant by the name of Tuffi on the train at the Alter Markt station. Tuffi became upset shortly into the ride, crashed through the left side of the car and fell into the river Wupper below. The elephant, two journalists, and one passenger received minor injuries. Both the operator and the circus director were fined after the incident. To this day, the wall of a building at the location of the event (in-between the stations Alter Markt and Adlerbrücke) shows a painting of a jumping elephant.




March 31, 1901: Wuppertal Monorail Opens

1901: A suspended monorail opens in Germany, whisking passengers on an 8.3-mile loop some 40 feet over the Wupper River. Though not the world’s first single-track hanging rail system, it’s the world’s oldest monorail still in operation and Europe’s only suspended railway.

At the dawn of the era of train travel, the hilly Wupper Valley was an extremely difficult place to build a traditional railway: around tight corners, over rivers and above sharp drops. So, inspired by a horse-drawn prototype from British engineer Henry Palmer, German politician Friedrich Harkort drew up plans for a hanging monorail in 1826. It was never built, because it was opposed by local landowners.

The project lay dormant until the 1880s, when electrically powered urban mass transit was gaining in popularity. Engineer Carl Eugen Langen built an electric hanging-monorail prototype in Cologne in 1897, and construction of the Wuppertal Schwebebahn, or “suspended railway,” began in 1898, predating the founding of the city of Wuppertal itself by some 31 years.



Read More http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2010/03/0331wuppertal-monorail-opens?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29#ixzz0jkhuLZCR

[hayu_lol]

1. Rode this monorail back in the early 60s...

in Wuppertal Germany. Quite a scenic ride. The support frames were all black then and reminded me of the construction used in the 'Awful Tower' in Paris.