Wuppertal mono railway

Disaster

On 12 April 1999 a disaster took place. A railway carriage collided into a maintenance wagon left there by the technicians. The carriage crashed in the river Wupper and 38 passengers were wounded. Four people died.

Carl Eugen Langen

The mono railway is regarded as one of the safest means of transport. The Wuppertal railway was build by Carl Eugen Langen and was opened in 1901.

Businessman

Carl Eugen Langen was a businessman from Cologne who invented a way to transport flour-sacks. Later he realised that it could be used for transport of people too.

Revolutionary idea

Most cities were not interested in this revolutionary idea. Only the cities Elberfeld and Barmen (later: Wuppertal) were fascinated by this new way of transport. Above the river Wupper a mono railway, extending 13 km, was build. For the construction steel was used and therefore looks like the Eiffel Tower in Paris, which was completed two years earlier.

More information

Architecture Main Page
Xs: Big Ideas, Small Buildings
Zaha Hadid
Architectural Graphic Standards
Architecture and Disjunction
Architecture: Form, Space, and Order