Elevated railway

An elevated railway (also known as an El train for short) is a rapid transit railway with the tracks above street level on a viaduct or other elevated structure (usually constructed from steel, cast iron, concrete, or bricks). The railway may be broad-gauge, standard-gauge or narrow-gauge railway, light rail, monorail, or a suspension railway. Elevated railways are normally found in urban areas where there would otherwise be multiple level crossings. Usually, the tracks of elevated railways that run on steel viaducts can be seen from street level.

"Elevated" redirects here. For the short film by Vincenzo Natali, see Elevated (film).

Liverpool Overhead Railway, May 1951.
NS 93 train on an elevated portion of the line 5 of the Santiago Metro.
Two Wuppertal Schwebebahn trains meet above the street

History

The earliest elevated railway was the London and Greenwich Railway on a brick viaduct of 878 arches, built between 1836 and 1838. The first 2.5 miles (4.0 km) of the London and Blackwall Railway (1840) was also built on a viaduct. During the 1840s there were other plans for elevated railways in London that never came to fruition.[1]

From the late 1860s onward elevated railways became popular in US cities. The New York West Side and Yonkers Patent Railway operated with cable cars from 1868 to 1870, thereafter locomotive-hauled. This was followed by the Manhattan Railway in 1875, the South Side Elevated Railroad, Chicago (1892–), and the elevated lines of the Boston Elevated Railway (1901–). The Chicago transit system itself is known as "L", short for "elevated". The Berlin Stadtbahn (1882) and the Vienna Stadtbahn (1898) are also mainly elevated.

The first electric elevated railway was the Liverpool Overhead Railway, which operated through Liverpool docks from 1893 until 1956.

In London, the Docklands Light Railway is a modern elevated railway that opened in 1987 and, since, has expanded.[2] The trains are driverless and automatic.[3]

Another modern elevated railway is Tokyo's driverless Yurikamome line, opened in 1995.[4]

Systems

Monorail systems

Most monorails are elevated railways, such as the Disneyland Monorail System (1959), the Tokyo Monorail (1964), the Sydney Monorail (1988–2013), the KL Monorail, the Las Vegas Monorail, and the São Paulo Monorail. Many maglev railways are also elevated.

Suspension railways
H-Bahn Dortmund, a monorail suspension people mover

During the 1890s there was some interest in suspension railways, particularly in Germany, with the Schwebebahn Dresden, (1891–) and the Wuppertal Schwebebahn (1901). H-Bahn suspension railways were built in Dortmund and Düsseldorf airport, 1975. The Memphis Suspension Railway opened in 1982.

Suspension railways are usually monorail; Shonan Monorail and Chiba Urban Monorail in Japan, despite their names, are suspension railways.

People mover systems

People mover or automated people mover (APM) is a type of driverless grade-separated, mass-transit system. The term is generally used only to describe systems that serve as loops or feeder systems, but is sometimes applied to considerably more complex automated systems. Similar to monorails, Bombardier Innovia APM technology uses only one rail to guide the vehicle along the guideway. APMs are common at airports and effective at helping passengers quickly reach their gates. Several elevated APM systems at airports including the PHX Sky Train at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport; AeroTrain at Kuala Lumpur International Airport; and the Tracked Shuttle System at London Gatwick Airport, United Kingdom.

Modern systems

Full metro system
Traffic on Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights, New York City, under the elevated IRT Flushing Line (used by the 7 and <7>​ trains) in the 1980s
Chinatown station in Los Angeles, California
Line 15 monorail, Sao Paulo, Brazil
Americas
Asia
Europe
Oceania
Disused
Forest Hills station on Boston's Washington Street Elevated in 1910 – the rail line was rebuilt in a cutting by 1987

People mover

Proposed designs

See also

References
  1. Jack Simmons and Gordon Biddle, The Oxford Companion to British Railway History, Oxford University Press, (1997), p.360.
  2. "DLR History Timeline". Transport for London.
  3. "Where are the drivers?" Transport for London.
  4. New Transit Yurikamome website History Retrieved 3 March 2015
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