
With Trains Like Schwebebahn, No Wonder Germans Love Public Transit - pseudolus
https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/02/germany-public-transit-schwebebahn-wuppertal-trains/581815/
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mimixco
The OP is right about the Disneyland connection; it's more than a resemblance.

The Wuppertal train was the inspiration for Murel Goodell's _Trailblazer,_ the
first commercial monorail in the United States and the first modern monorail
anywhere. Instead of steel wheels and rails, Goodell used rubber tires on a
concrete beam.

His first design was suspended like the Schwebebahn, but his investor, Axel
Lennart Wenner-Gren preferred a straddle-beam type where the train sits atop
the rail instead of underneath it. Goodell's second generation design is what
was installed at Disneyland (and Las Vegas, and Tokyo, and China, etc.). It
was named ALWEG as an acronym of the investor's name.

I'm in the process of building the Goodell Monorail Museum website to lay out
this history in more detail with some terrific archival documents and photos
that haven't been seen in 50 years.

