WUPPERTAL, Germany — When my friend in Cologne asked me if I might want to take a day trip, thanks to Cologne's proximity to various other notable cities (Dortmund, Düsseldorf, Bonn, among others), I said that I would like to go to Wuppertal to ride the Schwebebahn. To which they said, "I knew that's what you were going to say." My brand is strong.
Before my trip to Germany, I declared this desire to ride the Wuppertal Schwebebahn to many of my close friends, and also several strangers. Some people thought it sounded pretty cool. Others said they were happy for me. More than once I was accused of making up words.
Nothing about the glorious feat that is the Wuppertal Schwebebahn is made up. Schwebebahn means suspended railway, or, literally, "floating train," which is an apt way to describe a dangling monorail. It was the design of German engineer Eugen Langen and opened along and above the river Wupper in 1901, connecting several towns that would eventually merge to form the city of Wuppertal, or, literally, "Wupper valley." Both the early look of the train and its surroundings are captured in footage shot from the front of the Schwebebahn in 1902. Behold, "The Flying Train."
Elevated railways can come with the drawbacks of being loud for the surrounding homes and businesses, being unpleasant to pass under, and occupying valuable above-ground real-estate. Choosing to make your elevated railway a hanging one mitigates exactly none of those issues, though it does provide some novelty and an improved view. Langen apparently shopped the Schwebebahn around to various unenthusiastic German cities, but Wuppertal is uniquely suited to such a train: Nothing else was being built upon or immediately flanking the river Wupper, which is shallow and worth gazing upon. Wuppertal's particular aptness, and the hanging railway's lack of quantifiable advantages, also explain why this Schwebebahn was, for a long time, the only such structure with its particular purpose: Other than a suspended funicular also designed by Langen for Dresden, the next Schwebebahn-style train used for urban transit was the Shonan Monorail, which began operations in 1970. The two trains are friends.
Here is a Schwebebahn fact: A circus once brought a baby elephant named Tuffi onto the Schwebebahn, as a marketing stunt. This happened in 1950, well past the point when most people figured out that bringing a little elephant onto a floating train is not a good idea. Tuffi was supposed to have her own compartment on the train, but the marketing stunt was a bit too successful, with reporters and spectators trying to crowd in and get a look. Tuffi panicked, burst through the side of the train, and fell into the river Wupper. Somehow no one, human or pachyderm, was killed or severely hurt in this incident. Tuffi would live for several more decades. The incident, on German Wikipedia, is described in a section headlined "Tuffis Wuppersprung."
I did not want to have my own Wuppersprung, but I did want to have at least the first half of the Tuffi experience. My friends and I set out an approximately three-hour block to spend in Wuppertal, enough to do an end-to-end ride of the Schwebebahn and get lunch. Our plans were almost immediately scuppered by infamous Deutsche Bahn regional train cancellations, but we were able to get there by taking a different tram line to a different regional train out of a more distant station. Evidently, all rails lead to Wuppertal. No longer than a couple minutes' walk out of the Wuppertal Hauptbanhof did we see the baby blue Schwebebahn swoop just meters over our heads.
Here I will confess that I was anticipating the Schwebebahn to be a novelty, more of a gimmick than a real transit route, like Los Angeles's Angels Flight funicular or San Francisco's cable cars. After all, the Schwebebahn has a fancy-schmancy car called the Kaiserwagen, which one can rent out for weddings and parties and so forth. I was immediately proven incorrect about the functionality of the Schwebebahn, and may this blog serve as my public penance.
Even on the weekend, the Schwebebahn runs roughly every five minutes in either direction, which is not a headway that, say, Philadelphia's El achieves at rush hour. It has a useful and attractive website. The single line has a weekday ridership of approximately 80,000, which would rank sixth-highest among light-rail systems in the United States, many of which feature multiple lines. The city of Wuppertal has the population of Stockton, Calif., and twice the rail transit usage of Dallas. In 2015, the Schwebebahn received a new fleet of rolling stock (hanging stock?), and the old train cars were sold under the condition that they remain in the city of Wuppertal. Where do the buyers keep them? I don't know! I hope that some Wuppertaler has a converted Schwebebahn car in their backyard, and if they do, that they let me visit it sometime.
As part of Wuppertal's and thus North Rhine–Westphalia's regional transit system, riding the Schwebebahn is included within the broader Deutschlandticket pass. Otherwise, one can purchase a 24-hour ticket for the Schwebebahn and regional buses for 7.60 Euros, or pay by kilometer with the region's transit app. The internet recommended we sit in the back of the train for a panoramic view of the river and the city. As we boarded the train, two small children were already ahead of us, clambering into the seats closest to the end and leaning over to note whenever there was a piece of litter in the river, so we were treated to a small and consistent chorus of "plastik, plastik, plastik" until the train crossed over the roads instead. A street market spread out below.
Once the children disembarked, we filled their seats and took the same position, leaning over to look out and, unlike how one looks out of other trains, down through the massive rear windows. The sensation of riding the train was not unlike coasting along the gentle river unfurling beneath us; for a very old railway, it was quiet, and smooth enough for us to stay balanced without needing to hold onto anything. As the river bent, the train tilted ever so slightly to match it.
We rode from the Wuppertal Hauptbahnhof to the terminal station in Vohwinkel, where we disembarked and reentered on the other side of the station, as the train looped around. After returning to the city center, we had lunch at a genuinely excellent Korean restaurant; Wuppertal's bounties are endless. Once we finished lunch, we boarded the Schwebebahn at Wuppertal Hauptbahnhof once more, and began our final ride to the other terminal, Wuppertal Oberbarmen Bahnhof, where we would transfer to our regional DB train back to Cologne. This time, we perched in the standing section along the right of the train to keep an eye out for Tuffi memorials.
As the Schwebebahn swayed through its curves, I already began to feel wistful. When could I next ride the Schwebebahn? Would it be worth buying a plane ticket next year just to have the opportunity again? Would someone try and fail to convince me there was something more worthy of my time in Düsseldorf? With these questions unanswered, we disembarked at the final station, and I gave one last look to the building in which the Schwebebahn cars slept at night. Farewell for now, Schwebebahn! One day I will be married on the Kaiserwagen.
