Wuppertal Schwebebahn


The Wuppertaler Schwebebahn is a suspension railway in Wuppertal, Germany.
Its full name is Anlage einer elektrischen Hochbahn, System Eugen Langen. It is the oldest electric elevated railway with hanging cars in the world and is a unique system.
Designed by Eugen Langen to sell to the city of Berlin, the installation with elevated stations was built in Barmen, Elberfeld and Vohwinkel between 1897 and 1903; the first track opened in 1901. The Schwebebahn is still in use today as a normal means of local public transport, moving 25 million passengers annually.
The Schwebebahn runs along a route of, at a height of about above the River Wupper between Oberbarmen and Sonnborner Straße and about above the valley road between Sonnborner Straße and Vohwinkel. At one point the railway crosses the A46 motorway. The entire trip takes about 30 minutes. The Schwebebahn operates within the VRR transport association and accepts tickets issued by the VRR companies.
Due to an accident in November 2018, the Schwebebahn was closed down for nearly nine months. It re-opened on 1 August 2019.

History

The Wuppertaler Schwebebahn had a forerunner: in 1824, Henry Robinson Palmer of Britain presented a railway system which differed from all previous constructions. It was a low single-rail suspension railway on which the carriages were drawn by horses. Friedrich Harkort, a Prussian industrial entrepreneur and politician, loved the idea. He saw big advantages for the transportation of coal to the early industrialised region in and around the Wupper valley. Harkort had his own steel mill in Elberfeld; he built a demonstration segment of the Palmer system and set it up in 1826 on the grounds of what is today the Wuppertal tax office. He tried to attract public attention to his railway plans.
On 9 September 1826, the town councillors of Elberfeld met to discuss the use of a "Palmer's Railway" from the Ruhr region, Hinsbeck or Langenberg, to the Wupper valley, Elberfeld, connecting Harkort's factories. Friedrich Harkort inspected the projected route with a surveyor and a member of the town council. The plans never went ahead because of protests from the transport branch and owners of mills that were not on the routes.
In 1887 the cities of Elberfeld and Barmen formed a commission for the construction of an elevated railway or Hochbahn. In 1894 they chose the system of the engineer Eugen Langen of Cologne, and in 1896 the order was licensed by the City of Düsseldorf. In 2003, the Rhine Heritage Office announced the discovery of an original section of the test route of the Schwebebahn.
Construction on the actual Schwebebahn began in 1898, overseen by the government's master builder, Wilhelm Feldmann. On 24 October 1900, Emperor Wilhelm II participated in a monorail trial run.
In 1901 the railway came into operation. It opened in sections: the line from Kluse to Zoo/Stadion opened on 1 March, the line to the western terminus at Vohwinkel opened on 24 May, while the line to the eastern terminus at Oberbarmen did not open until 27 June 1903. Around of steel were used to produce the supporting frame and the stations. The construction cost 16 million gold marks. The railway was closed owing to severe damage during World War II, but reopened as early as 1946.

Modernization

The Schwebebahn nowadays carries approximately 80,000 passengers through the city per weekday. Since 1997, the supporting frame has been largely modernized, and many stations have been reconstructed and brought up to date technically. Kluse station, at the theatre in Elberfeld, had been destroyed during the Second World War. This was also reconstructed during the modernization-phase. Work was planned to be completed in 2001; however a serious accident took place in 1999 which left five people dead and 47 injured. This, along with delivery problems, delayed completion. By 2004, the cost of the reconstruction work had increased from €380 million to €480 million.
On 15 December 2009, the Schwebebahn suspended its operations for safety concerns; several of the older support structures needed to be renewed, a process that was completed on 19 April 2010.
In 2012, the Schwebebahn was closed for significant periods to upgrade the line. The closing times were 7 to 21 July, 6 August to 22 October and weekends in September and November. The modernization was completed and the line fully reopened on 19 August 2013.

Post 2015 trains replacement

On 10 November 2011, Wuppertaler Stadtwerke signed a contract with Vossloh Kiepe to supply a new fleet of Generation 15 or GTW 15 trains to gradually replace the ageing GTW 72 fleet. The 31 new articulated cars were assembled by Vossloh España in Valencia, Spain, featuring a light blue livery and having cushioned seating, air conditioning, information displays, LED lights, improved disabled access and induction motors with energy recovery during braking. The first new train was commissioned by WSW in 2015 and entered regular passenger service on 18 December 2016, at which point the line's power supply voltage was raised from 600 to 750 V.
The GTW 72 stock was gradually withdrawn from service as the new trains were introduced, the last of which operated immediately prior to the line's shutdown in November 2018. WSW announced it would not scrap any of the GTW 72 stock, but instead offer 21 of the vehicles for sale and three for free, as long as they remained in the city of Wuppertal.

Stations

The cars are suspended from a single rail built underneath a supporting steel frame. The cars hang on wheels which are driven by multiple electric motors operating at 750 volts DC, fed from a live rail below the running rail.
Until August 2019, the Schwebebahn used block signalling like other light- and heavy rail systems. Signals with red, green and yellow lights, present at every station, signalled the driver if the next block, usually continuing until the next station, was free or not. The yellow aspect was mostly used to warn about construction work ahead, while a blinking red light warned about more severe problems.
Today, the Schwebebahn uses the European Train Control System, allowing for shorter distances between trains.
The supporting frame and tracks are made out of 486 pillars and bridgework sections. When the line was originally built, Anton Rieppel, head of MAN-Werk Gustavsburg, designed the structural system, which he patented. At each end of the line is a servicing depot, including a loop of track to allow the trains to be turned around.
The current fleet consists of 31 articulated cars. The cars are 24 metres long and have 4 doors. One carriage can seat 48 with approximately 130 standing passengers. The top speed is and the average speed is.
The Kaiserwagen, the original train used by Emperor Wilhelm II during a test ride on 24 October 1900, is still operated on scheduled excursion services, special occasions and for charter events.

Incidents

;15 January 1917
;21 July 1950
;11 September 1968
;25 March 1997
;12 April 1999
;5 August 2008
;17 October 2013
;November 2018

In popular culture

Literature

The Schwebebahn is alluded to in Theodor Herzl's 1902 utopian novel Altneuland. For Herzl, the Schwebebahn was the ideal form of urban transport, and he imagined a large monorail built in its style in Haifa.

Film

A sequence in Lyrical Nitrate, using film from between 1905 and 1915, features the Schwebebahn. Rüdiger Vogler and Yella Rottländer use images of the Schwebebahn in Wim Wenders's 1974 movie Alice in the Cities. It also appears in the 1992 Dutch movie The Sunday Child by Pieter Verhoeff, in Tom Tykwer's 2000 film The Princess and the Warrior and as a background and to a number of outdoor dance choreographies in another Wim Wenders film – 2011's Pina, and some dances are set inside the cars.
The Schwebebahn is both subject and title of video work by the Turner Prize-nominated artist Darren Almond. Produced in 1995, Schwebebahn is the first of three videos that constitute his Train Trilogy.

Other fiction

Some of the events in Le Feu de Wotan, a Belgian bande dessinée in the Yoko Tsuno series, take place in the Schwebebahn.
The denouement of the episode of the 1972 ITC TV series The Adventurer called "I'll Get There Sometime" takes place on the railway.

Gallery