_______ __ _______
| | |.---.-..----.| |--..-----..----. | | |.-----..--.--.--..-----.
| || _ || __|| < | -__|| _| | || -__|| | | ||__ --|
|___|___||___._||____||__|__||_____||__| |__|____||_____||________||_____|
on Gopher (inofficial)
URI Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
URI Wuppertal's suspended monorail proved its doubters wrong [video]
FlyingSnake wrote 1 hour 7 min ago:
Wuppertal Schwebebahn is wonderful to watch in person. Sometimes my
ICE goes through Wuppertal and it looks cyberpunk when the conditions
are right.
Many people donât know that Margao, Goa also planned and tested the
same H-Bahn system. I witnessed these Skybuses when I was visiting
Margao back then. It was an interesting experiment which failed
unfortunately.
URI [1]: https://youtu.be/SUarfX3BrIg
dagurp wrote 2 hours 55 min ago:
This is an opportunity to use the world's least used emoji
pvorb wrote 3 hours 13 min ago:
If you learn about the Wuppertal suspended monorail, you should also
read about Tuffi, the elephant that jumped off of it in 1950.
URI [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuffi
czottmann wrote 1 hour 9 min ago:
The video contains a segment about Tuffi.
MomsAVoxell wrote 3 hours 13 min ago:
Iâve made a day trip to Wuppertal, specifically for the purpose of
taking this train. I grew up on the other side of the planet in a
completely different culture, but in my youth I saw a âtelescreen
articleâ during some film matinee pause, about this âquaint, German
thingâ and as I grew older and found myself actually living in
Germany, one of my first thoughts was âI wonder if that thing still
existsâ .. so I was very happy to learn it was still in operation,
indeed.
Germany is a land full of beautiful little towns and cities and
settlements which deserve to be explored with the proper tempo. On a
particularly sunny day I drove to Wuppertal from the village Iâd
moved to in the Rühr, in my beat up Citroën (thatâs another quaint
European device worthy of a story), deciding to eschew the autobahn and
instead take the older country roads where I could, and for an hour or
so I was transported back to another Germany, the pre-war late 19th
century land of much promise, whose roads and paths were set,
seemingly, with a far greater sense of aesthetics than the speedy
efficiency-worshipping channels of the highways. So many little roads
and lanes which âfeltâ as if the original architects were bovine in
nature, or perhaps based on an ancient feeding route of deer and boar.
When I arrived in Wuppertal, I was immediately impressed with this
technological marvel that had been suspended in the space above
700-year old houses and buildings from another time. It felt so
futuristic and hopeful, and it was futuristic and hopeful - and more
important to the Germans, useful as a device for getting around the
serpentine Wuppertal construct. I parked the Citroën in the lower
part of the town, watching it deflate itself like some Lucasâian
landracer, walked up to the nearest Schweberbahn station, and took the
thing all the way up and down the Wupper. It was delightful, at first,
seeming to be so whimsical and expensive, but as we reached the end of
the line, I was struck by how suddenly mundane the experience had
become.
It was normal to fly over the river, suspended, above the height of a
regular commute, curving through the spaces between buildings rather
than under them, and I was delighted to recognize the buildings - now a
hundred years older - that I had seen in the original film, still in
place yet somehow cleaner than Iâd remembered. Even still, in a
matter of an hour, Iâd experienced that whiplash of âthis is the
future (of the past) ..â straight to âthis is normal now (yet
weird) ..â so many of us technologists endure â but in this case,
it was with a device from an entirely different century. It was
archaic futurist whiplash, not at all entirely like the modern kind,
but similar somehow.
I took it back down to my Citroën, noting the gravity change along the
way, and found I had a new form of respect for even that vehiclesâ
weird, quaint, suspension. (That particular model raised and lowered
itself according to speed, you see..)
That trip to Wuppertal was one of the very first events in my life in
Germany which gave me so much more respect for the German people than
the post-war indoctrination and cultural distrust Iâd experienced as
a kid growing up in a state that was once at war with the place.
If you ever get a chance to visit Germany, a day trip outside the realm
of the autobahn is highly recommended.
Simply get lost in the place.
Because of Wuppertal I became finely tuned to appreciate the German
instinct for preservation of older things, while also somehow managing
to integrate technological progress which doesnât just supplant the
surroundings, but eventually enhances them.
croemer wrote 3 hours 51 min ago:
Lol, I first parsed the title as "the monorail _project_ having been
suspended" (=halted)
hohoho3688583 wrote 6 hours 18 min ago:
unspeakable
pfdietz wrote 6 hours 53 min ago:
Wuppertal is an unusually elongated, "linear" city, isn't it? Along
the Wupper valley. I could see that being appropriate for a monorail;
does it extend along the long axis?
Halian wrote 9 hours 4 min ago:
Needs more woopers. 'o'
porphyra wrote 10 hours 10 min ago:
A lot of people are very against "gadgetbahns" which are unorthodox
means of transportation that are often quite expensive. But I love
these unique vehicles! And it is very satisfying when one of them
actually works out in an economical sense.
namibj wrote 11 hours 23 min ago:
Notably the system works for substantially larger swinging angles (the
structure gets somewhat heavier to leave that much more free space),
and one could bank the track in turns, too.
Together some impressive g forces could be archived; 1 horizontal g for
a total of sqrt(2) would be barely beyond the wuppertal geometry's
capabilities; 2 horizontal g for sqrt(3) total are still fairly
realistic if the passengers/cargo tolerate.
You basically save having to go through mountains to keep speed, as you
can go through a curvy valley.
slow_typist wrote 2 hours 34 min ago:
2 g horizontal results in sqrt(2^2+1^2)g = sqrt(5)g swinging out at
tan^(-1)(2) = 63.5 degrees from the perpendicular direction (probably
overswinging a bit depending on track design and speed). Would be
good fun on a commute. Hopefully the inner part of the superstructure
doesnât come out of the ground.
bobthepanda wrote 10 hours 21 min ago:
Passengers have fairly low tolerance for forces on a daily traveling
mode of transport. Your average commuter wants to be able to hold a
hot coffee without scalding themselves.
dmkolobov wrote 9 hours 49 min ago:
Genuine question: wouldnât we still be able to do that? Im
imagining similar behavior to swinging cup of water around on a
string. The liquid experiences the same acceleration and
âsettlesâ within the new orientation of the container.
kfarr wrote 5 hours 52 min ago:
Yes the same as an airplane turning, you donât spill your
coffee on a banked turn
jerkstate wrote 3 hours 53 min ago:
so long as the turn is coordinated!
URI [1]: https://pilotinstitute.com/turn-coordinator/
ttepasse wrote 11 hours 24 min ago:
There is a semi-famous video from 1902 recording a ride on the then new
Schwebebahn. MoMa digitised it and someone on Youtube did a
side-by-side-recording of 1902 vs. 2015: [1] There are two other
suspended monorails in the Ruhr are, both driver-less and shorter,
built in the 80s and 90s by Siemens, the H-Bahn at Dortmund University
and the Skytrain at Düsseldorf Airport. I drove the H-Bahn daily,
because computer science back then was distributed all about the
campus. Still have fond memories about it. (Less so about the degree.)
The Tim Traveller on Youtube recently did a video about it:
URI [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TqqdOcX4dc
URI [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Kwpj1UOrhs
asyx wrote 3 hours 36 min ago:
I lived in the student housing at the⦠southern campus? The
apartment buildings that are in Eichlingenhofen. But I went to the FH
not the TU which is in the other site of campus. I spent a lot of
time on the H-Bahn. Itâs super cute and feels kinda sci-fi-ish.
martin_a wrote 12 hours 0 min ago:
I've studied in Wuppertal and have very fond memories of the
Schwebebahn.
Some people get very sick while riding it, which is probably due to the
train slightly swinging in its stations. That's rather unsual and some
bodies can't handle it that well.
It was always funny to "test" who is affected by that with new students
during their first week.
If you have the chance: Ride the Schwebebahn from end station to end
station and have a look at the city from above. Wuppertal is probably a
good example of and old industrial city struggling to find its way into
modern times.
echelon wrote 13 hours 19 min ago:
I wish we had more monorails and viaducts. They're useful, leave the
ground infrastructure unimpeded, and are honestly beautiful to look at.
bobthepanda wrote 10 hours 18 min ago:
Monorails are only really beautiful in jurisdictions that donât
require emergency walkways along the length. If a place requires
that, then the visual bulk is no different from a normal railway.
Animats wrote 5 hours 58 min ago:
Maybe. Compare the Las Vegas Monorail with aerial sections of BART.
But BART is heavy rail, with serious speed and capacity.
resoluteteeth wrote 10 hours 41 min ago:
I think the main problem with suspended monorails is that they're
more expensive to build unless the tracks are already going to have
to be elevated for 100% of their length due to other constraints.
As long as that's the case, it doesn't seem like they really have any
significant disadvantages compared to normal trains.
But otherwise, by choosing a monorail you're going from being able to
run some parts of the tracks on the ground with very little
cost/effort to not being able to run any of them directly on the
ground for very little benefit aside from looking cool.
xg15 wrote 45 min ago:
I think the movie Minority Report had a really cool concept of a
sort of "semi-suspended" railway: The machinery that connected to
the rails could rotate all around the train car, so depending on
the environment, the tracks could go below the car, above the car,
or even beside the car, which would allow it to use sheer walls as
"ramps".
I'm not sure if something like this would in any way be physically
feasible, but if yes, it might solve the cost problem, because part
of the rails could then be run on the ground.
(Maybe a less sci-fi version would be a "hybrid" car that has a
second set of wheels on the underside and could switch between
ordinary and overhead rails as needed?)
ajmurmann wrote 12 hours 36 min ago:
I think they are good in limits. I love the occasional one, but as a
very common solution I'd prefer elevated walkway systems like in Hong
Kong which leaves the sun and view to pedestrians. Of course the
occasional monorail is a huge win and, add you say, beautiful
badgersnake wrote 13 hours 28 min ago:
I went for a ride back in March of this year. Itâs a cool piece of
engineering.
We rode it to the Engels museum and the sculpture park, Wuppertal was
worth the day trip from Cologne.
pixelpoet wrote 13 hours 46 min ago:
I love the Schwebebahn, and there's this funky song about it :D
URI [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6Ifi3wl550
martin_a wrote 12 hours 5 min ago:
Check out meelman, he's a rap artist from Wuppertal, the Schwebebahn
is a reoccuring theme in his songs:
URI [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6jDQpSOdoc
skrebbel wrote 14 hours 17 min ago:
Last xmas my kids and I stayed over in Wuppertal on the way back home
from family just to check out the Schwebebahn and it didn't disappoint!
It makes what would otherwise be a relatively ordinary Ruhrgebiet-style
German city (ie mostly ugly), a uniquely beautiful walk. It's also
awesome that the Schwebebahn is just regular public transport. You can
get up into one of the stops, buy an obscenely cheap ticket (like 1
euro per person or something, I forgot), and ride it out.
I liked being under it even more than being on it - the combination of
the post-WWII buildings with the nature around the river and the early
industrial Schwebebahn heavy metal design gives the riverside a very
unique, slightly dieselpunk, atmosphere.
I wouldn't say it's worth a trip on its own but it was definitely worth
a detour for us!
mikewarot wrote 14 hours 38 min ago:
My grandfather emigrated from Vohwinkel in 1921. I imagine he rode it
quite a bit while training as a locksmith. I've always wanted to see it
in person.
I found the address he used to live at... it's an empty lot on a
corner. 8(
ordu wrote 14 hours 45 min ago:
So, it seems a falling elephant wouldn't splash if it splashed into the
river.
jhoechtl wrote 7 hours 46 min ago:
A reverence to areal event
URI [1]: https://youtu.be/IrMNQP4sJnA?si=M13ENQoLMY5PTFyj
itronitron wrote 7 hours 37 min ago:
you seem to have linked an Ad
DIR <- back to front page