Elevated railway

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File:20220113 03a CTA Green Line L near Congress St.jpg
A Chicago "L" train

An elevated railway or elevated train (also known as an el train or el for short) is a 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 a broad-gauge, standard-gauge or narrow-gauge railway, rapid transit, light rail, monorail, or a suspension railway. Elevated railways are normally found in urban areas that would otherwise require impracticably many level crossings. Usually, the tracks of elevated railways that run on steel viaducts can be seen from street level.

History

File:Liverpool Overhead Railway - Every boy's book of railways and steamships (1911) (14572313920) (cropped).jpg
Liverpool Overhead Railway, 1911

The earliest elevated railway was the London and Greenwich Railway on a brick viaduct of 878 arches, built between 1836 and 1838. The first Template:Convert 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.<ref>Jack Simmons and Gordon Biddle, The Oxford Companion to British Railway History, Oxford University Press, (1997), p.360.</ref>

From the late 1860s onward, elevated railways became popular in US cities. New York's West Side and Yonkers Patent Railway opened in 1868 as a cable-hauled elevated railway<ref name="Brimner Waldman 2004 p. 23">Template:Cite book</ref> and was operated using locomotives after 1871, when it was renamed the New York Elevated Railroad.<ref name="Mid-Continent Railway Museum 2006">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="Court of Appeals: New York: No.426 1891 p. 10-PA60">Template:Cite book</ref> This was followed in 1875 by the Manhattan Railway Company, which took over the New York Elevated Railroad.<ref name="Sansone 2004 p. 11">Template:Cite book</ref> Other early elevated systems in the US included the Chicago "L", which was built by multiple competing companies beginning in 1892,<ref name="Sadowski 2021 p. 7">Template:Cite book</ref> as well as the Boston Elevated Railway in 1901 and the Market–Frankford Line in Philadelphia in 1907.<ref name="Cheney Sammarco 2000 p.">Template:Cite book</ref> Globally, 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<ref name="American Public Transit Association 1995 p. 38">Template:Cite book</ref> and has since expanded.<ref>"DLR History Timeline". Template:Webarchive Transport for London.</ref> The trains are driverless and automatic.<ref>"Where are the drivers?" Transport for London.</ref> Another modern elevated railway is Tokyo's driverless Yurikamome line, opened in 1995.<ref name="Shinkenchiku-Sha 1996 p.">Template:Cite book</ref>

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, the Seattle Center Monorail and the São Paulo Monorail. Most maglev railways are also elevated.

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Two Wuppertal Schwebebahn trains

Suspension railways

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

Rapid transit, light rail or commuter rail systems

Africa

File:Roosevelt-avenue-queens-nyc cars driving-under-elevated-railway-line 1980s.jpg
Roosevelt Avenue in New York City, under the IRT Flushing Line (used by the Template:NYCS trains) in the 1980s
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Chinatown station in Los Angeles
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Line 15 monorail, São Paulo

Americas

Asia

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Skytrain in Bangkok
File:Beautiful Kochi Metro Train.jpg
Kochi Metro train at Aluva station

Europe

File:Kantstr s-bahn upper-west waldorf-astoria 2023-01-29.png
S-Bahn in Berlin
File:DSC08757 Frankfurt Rosa-Luxemburg-Straße und U-Bahn als Hochbahn.jpg
Frankfurt:U1 near Ginnheim

Oceania

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File:Forest Hills El 1910.jpg
Washington Street Elevated in Boston (1910). The line was rebuilt in a cutting by 1987.

Disused

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H-Bahn in Dortmund

People mover

Proposed designs

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See also

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References

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