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Riding high in Germany on the world's oldest suspended railway
- tormeh 1y agoThis does seem like a superior way to build elevated rail. Less noise in particular, as turning doesn't induce slippage like on a normal train. Wonder why it's so rare.
- highcountess 1y agoI think the lock-in is the biggest issue. If you have a hanging rail system, you can't just transition off the hanging rail to bottom rail when no longer needed like you could with elevated bottom rail.
- bombcar 1y agoThis one has the advantage of always being over the river, but you could (at much increased weight) put wheels on both the top and bottom of the carriage and have a transition point. Expensive and impractical, but could be fun at a theme park.
- cesarb 1y ago> but you could (at much increased weight) put wheels on both the top and bottom of the carriage and have a transition point. A fictional example of this is the monorail on the Half-Life games, which transitions between straddle-beam and suspended.
- frosted-flakes 1y agoLots of unnecessary complexity. In this case it makes sense because the majority of the line is directly over a river due to space constraints, but it's a lot simpler to build a concrete viaduct and run normal trains ovwr it. This also allows the train to transition to run underground or at-grade.
- Gigachad 1y agoNot an engineer, but just looking at the photos, this takes an enormous amount of steel. While most elevated rail is just a concrete bridge with a small amount of structural steel. Most rails lines continue far enough to leave dense urban areas where this makes sense so they have to transition between elevated and ground level tracks which this can't do.
- cenamus 1y agoTurning also doesn't involve slippage in trains. Many locomotives already have independently turning wheels, and the solid axles of train carts can also turn just fine (as explained in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_-UJNETSlg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_-UJNETSlg for example)
- Bigpet 1y agoThe solid axle turning without slippage from that video works for regular inter-city rail. I think it doesn't work for rails with the tighter turning radii often required of inner city trams and similar rail transport.
- mbajkowski 1y agoHaving lived there for several years I remember these to be quite loud. Maybe because the way they hang allows them to sway left to right a bit, and causes the metal wheels to make contact with the track at various angles. Quiet they were not, but fun to ride for sure, and a lot more punctual than busses.
- vegabook 1y agoBit of an HDR vibe going on in the photos.
- somat 1y agoDangle-trains are one of those things that appeal to me for unknown reasons, they just look so cool. But I am unable to really quantify the appeal, so here is my attempt. Advantages: keeps your electrical plant out of the weather allows the track to be out of the road while allowing street level access to train. This one is a bit iffy as the dangle train will usually be put above street traffic. Disadvantages: look at how much steel it takes to make that box beam. Every thing is in tension, leading to complicated structure to contain it, joints can be much simpler in compression. Any how as a dangle-train connoisseur I leave you with two additional videos. A dangle train in japan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGLrP5eawdY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGLrP5eawdY The Tim Traveler (perhaps the best all around esoteric travel channel) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Kwpj1UOrhs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Kwpj1UOrhs
- thoeri2o34j234 1y ago+1 for the Shonan-Monorail. For those travelling to Tokyo, go to Kamakura, take the famous Enoden to Enoshima, then take Shonan-Monorail to Ofuna and return to Tokyo.
- tecleandor 1y agoOh! Last time I went to Kamakura was in 2006 and I didn't visit Enoshima nor Ofuna. I'm going to Tokyo this next month again. Are those visits worthy?
- Aeolun 1y agoJapan has a lot more of these, though normally the tracks are below the wagons, which is presumably more efficient.
- decimalenough 1y agoJapan has exactly two (Chiba & Shonan). But that's still a lot by world standards, since there's less than 10 total in existence.
- gHA5 1y ago[flagged]
- Stratoscope 1y agoHere is a wonderful video, riding the Wuppertal Schwebebahn in 1902 and 2015 side by side: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TqqdOcX4dc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TqqdOcX4dc As noted in the description, the 1902 video plays in real time, and the 2015 video has some cuts and framerate adjustments to keep them in sync.
- Aeolun 1y agoThis is fantastic! Though my main takeaway is that we’ve seemingly forgotten how to make our cities aesthetically pleasing.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- appointment 1y agoHere's the original 1902 footage as digitized by MoMA, without AI bullshit smeared over it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ud1aZFE0fU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ud1aZFE0fU
- Jean-Philipe 1y agoThank you! I keep stumbling upon interesting historical footage on Youtube, only to find that it's been ruined by janky AI. I do think there's a place for AI and video restauration, but colors and 4k, with soundscape, really?
- frereubu 1y agoThanks for this. There's so much more detail here.
- irjustin 1y agoOh man I love the aesthetics of the 1902 trains, gorgeous.
- amai 1y agoCities were so beautiful before we destroyed them with all the streets for cars. Also modern buildings look really ugly. We need more ornaments in architecture.
- spankibalt 1y agoRiding high, high up in ze sky. Ja, ja, all fun and games... until your danglies drop. :( [1] 1. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Wuppertal_Schwebebahn_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Wuppertal_Schwebebahn_acc...]
- 8bitsrule 1y agoFive human dead in 125 years is a record to envy for most transit systems. (Light rail likes to run into pedestrians, almost as much as buses.) And it was a maintenance failure, not an operator or structural one. Not to count the baby elephant that fell out of one car back in 1950. Wuppertal is a wonderful ride for many thousands daily, millions for decades, and is a wonderful model of visual, sane, safe engineered public transport.
- spankibalt 1y ago> Not to count the baby elephant that fell out of one car back in 1950. Heavens to Betsy! And the elephant lived... till 1989! :) > Wuppertal is a wonderful ride for many thousands daily, millions for decades, and is a wonderful model of visual, sane, safe engineered public transport. Is ja jut, ich kauf' den Tagespass.
- LargoLasskhyfv 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuffi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuffi ! Furthermore: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milchversorgung_Rheinland https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milchversorgung_Rheinland cf.: https://duckduckgo.com/q=tuffi+milch&ia=images&iax=images https://duckduckgo.com/q=tuffi+milch&ia=images&iax=images Muuuh...äh...Tröööt!
- pimlottc 1y agoMore like “heavens to Wupper”
- Aeolun 1y agoIt was not the railway’s fault. As always in these cases, it was the squishy humans making the mistakes. Seriously, who works on a railway until 6 in the morning? That’s like deploying on a Friday afternoon at 16:50…
- sva_ 1y agoWhen I first saw this thing while riding my bike by that river, it seemed like the most grotesque industrial thing you could ruin a nice river with. But I know, people on here like trains (lol), so I'll probably get down voted for stating my opinion.
- Gare 1y agoYou might consider it an eyesore, but the river is hardly ruined by it.
- bombcar 1y agoThere are tons of public projects that faced fierce opposition because of the ugliness, that would now face fierce defense because of the heritage. And it's a better fate for the river than the concrete tubes many get stuck in. https://www.hiddenhydrology.org/lost-creeks-of-the-bay-area-part-i/ https://www.hiddenhydrology.org/lost-creeks-of-the-bay-area-...
- eternauta3k 1y agoYou can have both. Enjoy the weird-looking train when you're in Wuppertal, then be thankful that you have an awesome river back home like in Munich.
- pomian 1y agoWasn't there a hanging tram under the train going over the Berlin wall? (For workers at Checkpoint Charlie i believe.)
- brazzy 1y agoYou may be thinking of the M-Bahn: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Bahn https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Bahn - though fits almost none of the details:)
- Findecanor 1y agoI will never forget when I saw this the first time. I woke up early in the morning on a sleeper train to Düsseldorf. The train had stopped so I looked out the window: at A-frames straddling a river. My first thought was: "That's a weird-looking roller coaster".
- TimByte 1y agoHalf-asleep, expecting normal train scenery, and then bam: suspended train casually gliding over a river
- vintermann 1y agoI first saw it in a comic book. Roger Leloup, who drew most of the fancy planes and cars in Tintin, had his own series called Yoko Tsuno, and he used the Wuppertal suspended rail for a minor plot point in one album ("Odin's fire"). In order to have an excuse to draw it, most likely. His love for drawing cool technology shines through.
- TimByte 1y agoIt's wild that something built in 1901 is still not just operational but central to a city's transit system
- Xylakant 1y agoThat’s much more common than one would think. The London tube began operation 160 years ago. The U1 line in Berlin was constructed between 1902 and 1926. The central railway lines are substantially older. The Paris metro began operation in summer 1900. Bridges in old cities are very often much older than a century. The ship lift in Niederfinow that connects the Oder-Havel Canal to the Oder river went into operation in 1936 - the canal that it serves dates back to 1743. https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schiffshebewerk_Niederfinow https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schiffshebewerk_Niederfinow The Hoover hydroelectric dam is now 90 years old.
- codethief 1y ago> The U1 line in Berlin was constructed between 1902 and 1926. There's also the S1 line, large parts of which date back to 1874[0] or even 1838[1], depending on how you count: The train back in 1838 established most of the path today's S1 takes through southwestern Berlin. The S1 runs on a second pair of rails, constructed in 1874, that run in parallel to the 1838 line and diverge from it near the city border. The old 1838 line is set to be rebuilt by 2038. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wannsee_Railway https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wannsee_Railway [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin%E2%80%93Magdeburg_railway https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin%E2%80%93Magdeburg_rai...
- arethuza 1y agoA lot of the rail infrastructure in the UK is older than that - e.g. I use the Forth Bridge quite a lot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_Bridge
- rsynnott 1y agoI mean, you could say this of many if not most cities, I would think, for at least some part of the transport system. I can see elements of this from my office window: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_and_Kingstown_Railway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_and_Kingstown_Railway - it's almost 200 years old. Still carrying a train every few minutes at peak times. (Obviously a bit of a railway of Theseus at this point, in that besides some of the bridges there's ~no part of it which is literally from 1832.) This thing is kind of weird in that it's apparently basically been the same route since completion (most old railways ultimately become part of larger systems), but there are other examples; I'm fairly sure that the Glasgow Subway route is ~exactly what it was in 1896 today, say.
- amelius 1y agoCasts a shadow on the city. Not the perfect solution, if you ask me.
- johnwalkr 1y agoThe small width and therefore small shadow and unobstruction of views of this type of train system is one of its main benefits. It’s less than a monorail and much less than a conventional above-grade system.
- amelius 1y agoTake that header picture and imagine that street without the train, rail, support structures, and shadows. Much nicer if you ask me.
- LargoLasskhyfv 1y agoNow imagine that same street filled with streetcars, or even more buses, to carry the same amount of passengers in the same time...
- wpm 1y agoSo what? And for how long?
- kccqzy 1y agoWhat's wrong with shadows? Some people like shadows and others like sunlight. As long as there aren't shadows on every street you can always choose the streets you want to walk in.
- xg15 1y ago> As workers flooded to the growing cities of Barmen and Elberfeld – which merged in 1929 and were renamed Wuppertal in 1930 – the authorities realised a public transport system was needed. Other cities were going underground, but Wuppertal’s rocky soil and narrow, steep valley made any sort of U-Bahn impossible, forcing the Schwebebahn’s inventor, Eugen Langen, to look up instead. Was a bit confused at this paragraph, as to why it would suddenly date the inception of the Schwebebahn in the 1930s when the same article began with the maiden voyage in 1901. So to clarify this: The Schwebebahn really is older than the city of Wuppertal. The city only existed as a single municipality since 1929, so half the time the article talks about "Wuppertal", it really means Barmen and Elberfeld. So if there was no municipality, who did plan, approve and fund the project? Both cities, in a joint planning commission. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuppertal_Schwebebahn#History https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuppertal_Schwebebahn#Histor...
- atombender 1y agoI think the paragraph is quite clear. The cities merged later, and the "which merged..." part is only clarifying that the Schwebebahn was created while the current town was two separate towns.
- xg15 1y agoIt's technically correct, just confusing. I think what tripped me up was that he keeps using the city's name as a shorthand even for the time when it didn't exist yet. That sort of blurs the two events even though they were 30 years apart.
- curtisszmania 1y ago[dead]
- looofooo0 1y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuffi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuffi An elephant once fell out of it and survived.
- Radle 1y agoI‘ve grown up in Wuppertal if you‘ve got and questions i‘d be happy to answer.
- pimeys 1y agoI would love to visit in the Wuppertal's new club: Open Ground. Mark Ernestus is a legend, and they have an exceptional sound system in there.
- glkindlmann 1y agoI learned about the Schwebebahn from this[1] YT video (from The Tim Traveller), which goes into the history of why it made sense to build a suspended rail at this particular place and time. A more recent video [2] gives a much more detailed history. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IFh6wFTJiQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IFh6wFTJiQ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI5DehAuT2I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI5DehAuT2I
- lproven 1y agoI went through Wuppertal on the train in February after FOSDEM and saw the schwebebahn with my own eyes for the first time. I wish I'd jumped off and taken a ride... but I was on an Interrail ticket, and my seat cost me €50. If I'd given it up, I'd have had to buy another one...
- jonp888 1y agoThat's quite strange. Unlike in say France or Spain, all domestic trains in Germany should be reservation free for all Interrail ticket holders, including the fastest ICE trains.
- lproven 1y agoI boarded in Brussels, though. I was very nearly thrown off. I tried to buy a reservation in the station; I was told it was full. I decided to take my chances. It was well under 50% full, but the conductor tried to throw me off anyway. Only when I protested, a lot, did he concede that I although I would not want to I could buy a seat on the train, but it was €50. He was amazed I was willing to pay, but the alternative was paying less at the station and losing yet another hour -- maybe two. Interrail is cheap, but the big international trains try to make it difficult for you to use it.