Tony P wrote:
> It's funny that nobody ever comments on how utterly ugly the Wuppertal line is. There's a typical lovely European city there if you look closely beneath the web of girders. 10/10 for maximum streetscape impact. It seems, in Wuppertal, that the RAF failed to make its usual contribution to urban renewal in Germany.
I suppose it's an eye-of-the-beholder thing. I visited Wuppertal last year explicitly to ride on the schwebebahn, as well as to reach its western Vohwinkel terminus via the Route 683 trolleybus to there from neighbouring Solingen. The schwebebahn is a vital part of the area's transport, with its cars running every few minutes all day long, carrying 80,000 people a day, a staggering number for a line of just 13km. It has a lovely (to me) marked swaying from side to side as it floats along above the streets at the Vohwinkel end and above the Wupper River for about two thirds of the length most of the way to the eastern terminal Oberbarmen.
It was bombed in WWII; it was severely damaged and did not reopen till 1946.
Famously, a circus elephant called Tuffi jumped out of a carriage into the river below in 1950. Tuffi was unharmed! A statue in the river and a mural on a wall, both at the place where Tuffi jumped, can be seen as a commemoration to this day.
Attached are three photos -- one near Vohwinkel, with a Solingen BOB Solaris Trollino trolleybus passing under the schwebebahn off-wire, as the overhead ends at this point, you can see the turning loop (several Solingen trolleybus routes are extended beyond the wires using the new BOB - BatterieOberleitungsBus - trolleys and fairly new Hess trolleys fitted with generators for off-wire extensions such as to Vohwinkel Bahnhof); and two photos of the schwebebahn above the river showing the Tuffi statue and mural.
Merry Christmas. Frohe Weihnachten. David McL
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