[HN Gopher] Riding high in Germany on the world's oldest suspend...
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       Riding high in Germany on the world's oldest suspended railway
        
       Author : pseudolus
       Score  : 187 points
       Date   : 2025-06-08 23:38 UTC (23 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
        
       | tormeh wrote:
       | This 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 wrote:
         | I 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 wrote:
           | This 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 wrote:
             | > 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 wrote:
         | Lots 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 wrote:
         | Not 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 wrote:
         | Turning 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 for
         | example)
        
           | Bigpet wrote:
           | The 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 wrote:
         | Having 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 wrote:
       | Bit of an HDR vibe going on in the photos.
        
       | somat wrote:
       | Dangle-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
       | 
       | The Tim Traveler (perhaps the best all around esoteric travel
       | channel) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Kwpj1UOrhs
        
         | thoeri2o34j234 wrote:
         | +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 wrote:
           | Oh! 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 wrote:
         | Japan has a lot more of these, though normally the tracks are
         | below the wagons, which is presumably more efficient.
        
           | decimalenough wrote:
           | Japan has exactly two (Chiba & Shonan). But that's still a
           | lot by world standards, since there's less than 10 total in
           | existence.
        
             | Aeolun wrote:
             | I've seen a lot more monorails than just two. Are we
             | talking only about hanging monorails (since I was about
             | both above and below)?
             | 
             | The one that immediately comes to mind is the Tama
             | monorail.
             | 
             | Yurikamome Is technically not a monorail, but it pretty
             | close in terms of experience.
             | 
             | Tokyo Disney Resort Line is also an actual monorail.
        
               | decimalenough wrote:
               | Japan indeed has many monorails, but only the two I
               | mentioned are suspended. The Ueno Zoo monorail was also
               | suspended, but it was a bit of a toy and it's
               | decommissioned now anyway.
        
         | decimalenough wrote:
         | The reason this was used in Wuppertal is that because the town
         | is a steep valley with a river in the middle, so the best/only
         | place to hang the track was over the river.
         | 
         | Wikipedia has the (not very long) full list of every "dangle-
         | train" ever built:
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_railway
        
           | aidenn0 wrote:
           | And all currently operating trains are in one of China,
           | Germany, Japan.
        
         | lmm wrote:
         | Monorails are somewhat cheaper than elevated trains (if you
         | don't have extreme disabled-evacuation laws) but more expensive
         | than a conventional train at ground level, and junctions are a
         | nightmare. So they only work where you have a single isolated
         | line and would need to elevate most of the track anyway (and
         | suspended rather than straddle-beam improves cornering
         | performance but at a cost, so is only worth it if your route
         | has many sharp corners as well).
         | 
         | For Wuppertal, where the town is pretty linear along a river
         | valley, it works. (Even then, a straddle-beam monorail would
         | probably be more cost-efficient if you were starting from
         | scratch). For most places it doesn't.
        
           | bluGill wrote:
           | Monorail needs bigger tunnels than conventional rail so if
           | you need underground sections - which most systems need -
           | they are more expensive.
           | 
           | even if you are only need a single isolated elevated line
           | though monorail still loses just because there is no
           | standard: when you need spare parts in 20 years it is
           | questinable if you can get them.
        
             | dibujaron wrote:
             | Why would they need a bigger tunnel? Monorails are usually
             | built to a smaller loading gauge than conventional rail.
        
               | bombcar wrote:
               | I've never seen a monorail that wasn't on some massive
               | rail, about a foot by a foot in cross section or more.
               | 
               | That raises the monorail floor, which makes the whole
               | thing larger.
               | 
               | Modern trams can have nearly-ground-level floors.
        
             | lmm wrote:
             | > Monorail needs bigger tunnels than conventional rail so
             | if you need underground sections - which most systems need
             | - they are more expensive.
             | 
             | It's rare to need much in the way of tunnels on an elevated
             | line, by its very nature. And since the beam is narrower
             | than the carriages, it doesn't actually increase the tunnel
             | diameter (for a round cross section) that much.
             | 
             | > even if you are only need a single isolated elevated line
             | though monorail still loses just because there is no
             | standard: when you need spare parts in 20 years it is
             | questinable if you can get them.
             | 
             | These days there are systems that have been built for
             | decades by big name manufacturers, often the same
             | manufacturers that make trains. Hitachi or Alstom-nee-
             | Bombardier aren't going to disappear and leave their
             | clients high and dry, if only because it would be bad for
             | their broader rail businesses to do so.
             | 
             | I'm no fan of monorails - quite the opposite - but there
             | are cases where they work.
        
               | bluGill wrote:
               | Those are still single vendor systems so if your vendor
               | disappears - as has happened - you are stuck. You also
               | don't get competition for spare parts so who knows if the
               | price will be reasonable in the future.
        
           | itsmartapuntocm wrote:
           | Bangkok changed the plans of its two most recent transit
           | lines (Yellow and Pink) from standard rail to monorail for
           | the cost savings - since they're completely elevated. I guess
           | they solved the evacuation issue by making the space between
           | the two rails a solid platform.
        
         | madaxe_again wrote:
         | If you like The Tim Traveler you'll probably also like "What On
         | Earth is This?", very much the same vein, no overlap in what
         | they've covered. His latest video is on a 1960's underwater
         | cable car in France.
         | 
         | https://youtube.com/@whatonearthisthisthing?si=OCSx2leuGaDSG...
        
       | Stratoscope wrote:
       | Here is a wonderful video, riding the Wuppertal Schwebebahn in
       | 1902 and 2015 side by side:
       | 
       | 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 wrote:
         | This is fantastic! Though my main takeaway is that we've
         | seemingly forgotten how to make our cities aesthetically
         | pleasing.
        
         | appointment wrote:
         | Here's the original 1902 footage as digitized by MoMA, without
         | AI bullshit smeared over it:
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ud1aZFE0fU
        
           | Jean-Philipe wrote:
           | Thank 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 wrote:
           | Thanks for this. There's _so_ much more detail here.
        
         | irjustin wrote:
         | Oh man I love the aesthetics of the 1902 trains, gorgeous.
        
         | amai wrote:
         | Cities 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.
        
           | MagnumOpus wrote:
           | Here it is more a case of "cities were so beautiful before we
           | destroyed them with all the firebombing by the Royal Air
           | Force"...
           | 
           | Half of Wuppertal's buildings were destroyed by the end of
           | WW2. Some cities had the leeway to rebuild historical
           | ornamented buildings, many others built as cheaply and
           | quickly as possible because it was more important to create
           | more shelter rather than prettier housing.
           | 
           | Edit: Though I very much agree on the ugliness of the
           | excessive street furniture and car parking space!
        
             | amai wrote:
             | Don't forget the reason for all that firebombing: Germans
             | voted for a guy who promised to make Germany great again.
             | Worked out great in the end. It was the greatest end of a
             | war ever. What a great guy he was.
        
               | maweki wrote:
               | I don't think they questioned the reason for bombing
               | civilians. They questioned the utility.
        
           | mschuster91 wrote:
           | > Also modern buildings look really ugly. We need more
           | ornaments in architecture.
           | 
           | Agree but who the fuck is gonna pay for it? Urban housing is
           | already under massive price competition.
        
             | codethief wrote:
             | That's a common myth. Ornaments don't have to be expensive.
             | Besides, many of the old buildings we consider beautiful
             | today were meant for lower-income families back in the day.
        
               | bobthepanda wrote:
               | ornaments are expensive now (at least, the ways done
               | historically) because modernism put a generation of
               | artisans out of work and no one trained to be skilled in
               | a dying industry. now it's incredibly specialized.
        
           | mantas wrote:
           | Horse poop wasn't exactly great too.
        
             | defrost wrote:
             | Not to step in with your good shoes, and the tonnages to
             | remove in large urban areas like London and New York were
             | substantial, sure.
             | 
             | Thing is, horse poop and straw is _great_ for gardens, weed
             | suppression, growing food and flowers.
             | 
             | Can't really say the same for tyre particles, fuel
             | emissions, and while the bulk long term CO2 buildup beyond
             | the established balance _might_ make things  "greener" it
             | doesn't seem to advance nutritional returns of vegetation
             | enough to offset the climate altering downsides.
        
               | CamouflagedKiwi wrote:
               | Disease was a really big problem. The history suggests
               | there was far too much of it for gardens to make much of
               | an impact in it. There was also a lot of horse urine to
               | deal with too.
               | 
               | There are a bunch of problems with cars, but I'd much
               | rather live in one of those cities as they are today than
               | with no cars but mountains of horse manure everywhere.
        
               | defrost wrote:
               | Modern New York frequently has mountains of unremoved
               | waste whenever there's a sanitation dispute .. it's a
               | problem that hasn't been solved.
               | 
               | New York and London of yore had logistical challenges
               | that could have been improved, London famously rebuilt
               | its sewers to address the the miasma, and there are many
               | uses for urine, horse or human, if gathered.
               | 
               | It's more an infrastructure issue, dealing with waste,
               | than an intrinsic failing of one mode of transport over
               | another.
        
               | CamouflagedKiwi wrote:
               | It is exactly an intrinsic failing of one mode of
               | transport over another, that it produces unsanitary
               | biological waste which at scale makes life pretty
               | unpleasant in big cities. "It's an infrastructure issue"
               | doesn't help if the infrastructure to solve the problem
               | didn't exist and wasn't getting built (London's sewer
               | upgrade was built some time before the horse situation
               | was considered critical and was primarily to address
               | problems with human effluent).
        
               | bluGill wrote:
               | Horse poop is not great for gardens. Horses - unlike cows
               | - don't have a digestive system able handle seeds so
               | those pass through and end up in your garden. using
               | horsepoop in the garden means the weeds grow very well.
        
               | pfdietz wrote:
               | I made this mistake once. It took forever to get the
               | thistle under control.
        
               | Tade0 wrote:
               | Horse manure emits methane, ammonia and hydrogen sulfide.
               | Dried up it also becomes brittle and susceptible to
               | turning into PM emissions if disturbed.
               | 
               | It was way more of a problem than just aesthetics and
               | cars, even in their early days, appeared cleaner overall.
               | 
               | The one thing we never got back are noise levels - modern
               | cities are loud.
        
             | frereubu wrote:
             | Indeed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_horse_manure_cr
             | isis_of_1...
        
             | jlarocco wrote:
             | Horse poop would be an improvement over some of the stuff
             | on the streets nowadays.
        
           | frereubu wrote:
           | Agree about the destruction for cars. "Modern buildings look
           | really ugly" is far too broad a statement though. Apart from
           | it being entirely subjective - there are _lots_ of modern
           | buildings that I love - your statement just sounds like
           | "ugly buildings are ugly" and needs unpacking because I
           | presume you don't mean "every single building built after
           | 19XX is ugly".
        
             | codethief wrote:
             | > Apart from it being entirely subjective
             | 
             | Maybe not entirely. Eye-tracking studies suggest that
             | ornaments are what attracts people's attention.
        
           | wffurr wrote:
           | RIP all those street trees too.
        
           | stronglikedan wrote:
           | > Cities were so beautiful before we destroyed them with all
           | the streets for cars.
           | 
           | Thank goodness we did! I love my car. I love driving it every
           | day. It makes me happy.
        
           | locallost wrote:
           | You can make them "beautiful" (as in the eye of the
           | beholder), but it will cost you.
           | 
           | A lot of old buildings are beautiful because the people
           | making them beautiful were piss poor and paid accordingly.
        
         | sandworm101 wrote:
         | Ya, they were great before all those annoying people moved in
         | and made everything so crowded. Everything looks better when
         | there are open fields every other block.
        
           | Sharlin wrote:
           | It's not really about people. What made places crowded was
           | cars, which take a vast amount of extra space per person
           | transported, and continue to take that space even when empty.
        
         | Sharlin wrote:
         | Really brings it home how much common space we gave away to
         | cars.
        
       | spankibalt wrote:
       | Riding 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_acc...]
        
         | 8bitsrule wrote:
         | Five 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 wrote:
           | > 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 wrote:
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuffi !
             | 
             | Furthermore:
             | https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milchversorgung_Rheinland
             | 
             | cf.:
             | https://duckduckgo.com/q=tuffi+milch&ia=images&iax=images
             | 
             | Muuuh...ah...Trooot!
        
             | pimlottc wrote:
             | More like "heavens to Wupper"
        
         | Aeolun wrote:
         | It 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...
        
           | defrost wrote:
           | > Seriously, who works on a railway until 6 in the morning?
           | 
           | A great many rail crews the world over .. night time being
           | the best time for rolling maintainance and bed upgrades on
           | largely daytime passenger lines.
           | 
           | The question that was asked during the investigation was more
           | along the lines of "who does major work every night on rail
           | lines and _doesn 't_ integrate end of shift safety checks
           | (looking for still in place gear, unfinished work, etc)" ?
        
             | Aeolun wrote:
             | From what I saw they had those, but were in too much of a
             | hurry to do it properly because they waited until 10m
             | before line start to do them?
        
               | defrost wrote:
               | I read it that way also, a failure to proritise what
               | should be mandated safety checks prior to delaring the
               | line open for use, caused by a cascading chain of jamming
               | too much work into too short a shift.
               | 
               | My father had many stints on many mine sites as a leading
               | foreman in charge of shift workers and yard crews .. it's
               | been Occ Health and Safety protocol since the 1970s (in
               | Australia at least) to post game events that result in
               | death, injury, or even a near miss in order to adapt
               | procedures to minimise similar things happening again.
               | 
               | As I read it, at the time of this accident they hadn't
               | gotten to the stage of mandated safety checks and trial
               | runs prior to live runs.
               | 
               | Incidents like these are why many workplaces have check
               | lists and strict protocols.
               | 
               | The working at night part is largely irrelevant to the
               | actual accident, in this part of the world we run the
               | longest heaviest trains in the world 24/7/365 _largely_
               | fatal accident free and have dedicated safety officers
               | looking out around the clock.
        
               | bluGill wrote:
               | My company tracks near misses with that same progams.
               | That is any situation where someone could have got hurt
               | but by luck either nobody was there when the accident
               | hapyened or someone noticed something that is wasn't
               | procedure to look for.
        
           | rsynnott wrote:
           | Pretty much all major railway maintenance (at least for major
           | lines which can't reasonably be closed) is done overnight, to
           | avoid closing the railway during operating hours.
        
       | sva_ wrote:
       | When 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 wrote:
         | You might consider it an eyesore, but the river is hardly
         | ruined by it.
        
         | bombcar wrote:
         | There 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-...
        
         | eternauta3k wrote:
         | You 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 wrote:
       | Wasn't there a hanging tram under the train going over the Berlin
       | wall? (For workers at Checkpoint Charlie i believe.)
        
         | brazzy wrote:
         | You may be thinking of the M-Bahn:
         | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Bahn - though fits almost
         | none of the details:)
        
       | Findecanor wrote:
       | I will never forget when I saw this the first time.
       | 
       | I woke up early in the morning on a sleeper train to Dusseldorf.
       | 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 wrote:
         | Half-asleep, expecting normal train scenery, and then bam:
         | suspended train casually gliding over a river
        
         | vintermann wrote:
         | I 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 wrote:
       | It's wild that something built in 1901 is still not just
       | operational but central to a city's transit system
        
         | Xylakant wrote:
         | That'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
         | 
         | The Hoover hydroelectric dam is now 90 years old.
        
           | codethief wrote:
           | > 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
           | 
           | [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin%E2%80%93Magdeburg
           | _rai...
        
         | arethuza wrote:
         | A 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
        
         | rsynnott wrote:
         | I 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 -
         | 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.
        
         | pfdietz wrote:
         | Wasn't this substantially reconstructed after WW2? This whole
         | area was bombed and then fought through.
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Wuppertal_in_World_...
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruhr_pocket
        
       | amelius wrote:
       | Casts a shadow on the city. Not the perfect solution, if you ask
       | me.
        
         | johnwalkr wrote:
         | The 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 wrote:
           | Take that header picture and imagine that street without the
           | train, rail, support structures, and shadows. Much nicer if
           | you ask me.
        
             | LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
             | Now imagine that same street filled with streetcars, or
             | even more buses, to carry the same amount of passengers in
             | the same time...
        
         | wpm wrote:
         | So what? And for how long?
        
         | kccqzy wrote:
         | What'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 wrote:
       | > _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#Histor...
        
         | atombender wrote:
         | I 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 wrote:
           | It'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.
        
       | looofooo0 wrote:
       | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuffi
       | 
       | An elephant once fell out of it and survived.
        
       | Radle wrote:
       | I've grown up in Wuppertal if you've got and questions i'd be
       | happy to answer.
        
         | pimeys wrote:
         | I 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.
        
           | Radle wrote:
           | Huh, I didn't even notice a new Club has opened.
           | 
           | There's a free entry event on Thursday I'll go and check out
           | Open Ground.
        
       | glkindlmann wrote:
       | I 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
       | 
       | [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI5DehAuT2I
        
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