- ALWEG
ALWEG was a transportation company known for pioneering straddle-beam
monorail s.fact|date= October 2008History
Alweg was founded by Swedish industrial magnate Dr.
Axel Lennart Wenner-Gren in January 1953 as Alweg-Forschung, GmbH (Alweg Research Corporation), based inFühlingen ,Germany , nearCologne . The company was an outgrowth of the Verkehrsbahn-Studiengesellschaft (Transit Railway Study Group), which had already presented its first monorail designs and prototypes in the previous year. The Alweg name is anacronym of Dr. Wenner-Gren's name (Axel Lennart WEnner-Gren).Alweg is best remembered for developing the original
Disneyland Monorail System , opening in 1959, and theSeattle Center Monorail , opened for the 1962Century 21 Exposition .fact|date= October 2008 Both systems remain operational, with theSeattle Center Monorail still using the original Alweg trains which have traveled over one million miles. In 1963, Alweg proposed to the City ofLos Angeles a monorail system that would be designed, built, operated and maintained by Alweg. Alweg promised to take all financial risk from the construction, and the system would be repaid through fares collected. The City Council rejected the proposal in favor of no transit at all. This move was greatly resented by famed authorRay Bradbury who supported the monorail project, and still to this day resents the later move to build a subway in Los Angeles.fact|date= October 2008Alweg's technology was licensed in 1960 by Hitachi, which continues to construct monorails based on Alweg technology around the world. The world's busiest monorail line, the
Tokyo Monorail , was completed in 1964 by what was then the Hitachi-Alweg division of Hitachi.After Alweg ran into financial difficulties, Alweg's German operations were taken over by
Krupp .fact|date= October 2008 Alweg'sSeattle subsidiary Wegematic ceased operations in 1964, but some of the technology used in the Disneyland monorail was eventually acquired by Canadian companyBombardier .fact|date= October 2008In the 70's the building of an ALWEG monorail was planned in Vysoke Tatry (High Tatras), Slovakia.fact|date= October 2008
References
External links
* [http://www.alweg.com/ The ALWEG Archives]
* [http://www.monorails.org/tMspages/LA1963.html LA monorail proposal (The Monorail Society)]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.