The Suspension Hanging Railway

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The Wuppertaler Schwebebahn (Wuppertal's Suspension Railway) is a suspension railway in Wuppertal, Germany. The line was originally called in German: Einschienige Hängebahn System Eugen Langen (Single-Rail Hanging Railway, System of Eugen Langen) named after its inventor, Eugen Langen. It is the oldest electric elevated railway with hanging cars in the world. Being grade-separated, it is considered rapid transit.

Langen first offered the technology to the cities of Berlin, Munich, and Breslau who all turned it down. However, the towns of Barmen, Elberfeld, and Vohwinkel along the banks of the river Wupper were intrigued by the technology’s ability to connect their communities. The elevated tracks and stations were built between 1897 and 1903, the first track opened in 1901. The railway line is credited with growth of the original cities and their eventual merger into Wuppertal. The Schwebebahn is still in use as a local public transport line moving 25 million passengers annually per the 2008 annual report. New rail cars were ordered in 2015 called Generation 15 and the first new car went into service in December 2016.

The Schwebebahn runs along a route of 13.3 kilometres (8.3 mi), at a height of about 12 metres (39 ft) above the river Wupper between Oberbarmen and Sonnborner Straße (10 kilometres or 6.2 miles) and about 8 metres (26 ft) above the valley road between Sonnborner Straße and Vohwinkel (3.3 kilometres or 2.1 miles). At one point the railway crosses the A46 motorway. The entire trip takes about 30 minutes. The Schwebebahn operates within the Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Ruhr (VRR) and accepts tickets issued by the VRR companies including the Deutschlandticket.

The cars hang on wheels which are driven by multiple electric motors operating at 600 or 750 V DC, fed from a live rail below the running rail.
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 60 kilometres per hour (37 mph) and the average speed is 27 km/h (17 mph).

Sister suspension railway
Wuppertal Schwebebahn has a sister suspension railway relationships with Shonan Monorail since 2018. Shonan Monorail is a suspension railway located in Kanagawa, Japan and connects the cities between Kamakura and Fujisawa. Starting in 2018, both suspension railways made a campaign of their twinning.

Film
A sequence in Peter Delpeut's 1992 collage film Lyrical Nitrate, using film from between 1905 and 1915, features the Schwebebahn. Rüdiger Vogler and Yella Rottländer's characters ride the Schwebebahn in Wim Wenders's 1974 movie Alice in the Cities (Alice in den Städten). It also appears in the 1992 Dutch movie The Sunday Child (De Zondagsjongen) by Pieter Verhoeff, in Tom Tykwer's 2000 film The Princess and the Warrior (Der Krieger und die Kaiserin), and as a background to a number of outdoor dance choreographies in another Wim Wenders film – 2011's Pina, where some dances are also 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.

Video games
In 2013 the Schwebebahn Simulator 2013 was launched for Windows, Mac OS X and Wii U. In this simulator, the player controls the GTW 72.

In the "Add-on Wuppertal" DLC of the OMSI 2 bus simulator, there is the option for the player to control the Schwebebahn of the newest model (GTW 15), with all stations faithfully recreated.