No Elephants, Please

When people think of a monorail, they usually think of the classic Alweg design in Seattle, with a train or other conveyance atop a single beam or rail. But more than one monorail design works the opposite way, with a train or carriage slung underneath, hanging from the rail.

The most impressive such urban monorail in the world is the Wuppertal Schwebebahn (Schwebebahn means ‘suspended’ or ‘floating’ train) in Germany, which opened in 1901. This elegant monorail glides above city streets, along the river Wupper, and in and out of platforms and stations, carrying 25 million passengers a year. It survived serious damage in World War 2, returning to service in 1946.

The Schwebebahn’s storied history includes a couple of astonishing accidents, the most serious of which occurred in 1999 when a train car dropped from the track into the river, killing 5 people. This was the first and only fatal accident in almost 100 years of operation, and an investigation quickly showed that the cause was pure human error – maintenance workers had simply forgotten to remove a device that closed off a section of the track for repairs. The next train to come along the track hit the device and derailed.

On a more bizarre note, in 1950 a German circus arranged a publicity stunt involving an elephant named Tuffi. Tuffi boarded the co-called “Steel Centipede” without incident but became very upset shortly into the ride and decided to disembark between the Alter Markt and Adlerbrucke stations, crashing through one side of the car and plunging into the river below.

No one was killed, but Tuffi – along with two journalists and a passenger – received minor injuries. (Tuffi got some small scratches on his back.) On the wall of a building near where the unscheduled exit occurred, riders will see to this day a mural of a jumping elephant.

In 2007 the Rotorua Agrodome in New Zealand opened the first human-powered suspended monorail for adventure enthusiasts. This thrilling contraption – in a nod to the Schwebebahn – is called the Shweeb Velodrome.

The Kiwi Shweeb allows riders to race, using what look like fairly standard bicycle pedals, at speeds reaching up to 70kph. At speed the small one-person carriages – or pods – swing out at up to 60 degrees from vertical on the curves. Despite the fact that the Shweeb is clearly all about fun, it is also a prototype for a very promising kind of zero-emission urban transportation for short, flat distances.

The Wuppertal Schwebebahn
http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/featured/germany-incredible-hanging-railway/20672

The Shweeb