Hanging Train in Germany

This is a bridge over the "Wupper" at Wuppertal Barmen. In addition there is the famous Railway of the "Schwebebahn " over it. A Trains hang under the railway and connect the whole valley of Wuppertal in Germany.

Wuppertal in Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany, has one unique attraction, its hanging railway. While most cities preferred the underground solution for their public transports, Wuppertal decided to use an idea by Eugen Langen.

Eugen Langen had designed a hanging railway in Dresden, although it was more of a funicular railway. The length of the line was only 274 metres. Langen died in 1895 so he never saw his famous railway himself. The Hanging Railway in Wuppertal started operating in 1901. The track was extended in 1903, creating the route that is still used today.

In German the railway is called Schwebebahn, which translates to floating railway but in English it is generally called the hanging railway or the suspension railway. The official German name is Einschienige Hangebahn System Eugen Langen. Given that the length of the track is just 13,3 kilometres (8,3 miles) it is more of a tram than a railway.

Most of the track runs above the Wupper river. The 3 kilometre stretch between Wohlwinkel and Sonnborner Strasse is called the overland track, which runs above the streets. The overland part of the track has a completely different design of the support pylons compared to the main part of the track that runs above the Wupper river.

People that are expecting a roller coaster ride will be disappointed. The trains swing slightly but not much, you soon get used to it. The trains run just 8 metres (27 ft) above the streets and 10 to 12 metres (33-40 ft) above the Wupper river so do not expect any panoramic views from the trains. Also, calling Wupper a river is a little bit of exaggeration, it is more of a stream.

The stations are an interesting mix of old and new styles. It is well worth stopping at many of the stations and have a look at the building before continuing the journey. It is only a few minutes between the trains.

The suspension railway has been very safe. Only one fatal accident has happened, despite that the line has been operating for more than a hundred years. In 1999, five people were killed when a train plunged into the Wupper river. Unfortunately, it was an unnecessary accident. During weekend maintenance work, a piece of metal was forgotten on the track and the first train on Monday morning hit the piece of metal and plunged into the river.

Wuppertal is easy to reach, both by car and by train, from Cologne, Düsseldorf and the Ruhr-region. It is roughly a thirty minute train ride from all three places. The Hanging Railway stops at the main railway station, Hauptbahnhof in German. Tickets can be bought from machines at every station. A daily ticket is good value for your money.

Wuppertal was one of the first German towns to become industrialised. In the early 19th century Wuppertal was a prosperous town, larger than Cologne. But once the industrialisation really got underway in Germany, Wuppertal could not keep up with its neighbours. Thanks to its unique railway, Wuppertal receives a small but steady stream of visitors.

All in all, the Hanging Railway is more of a unique experience rather than an exciting railway journey. Well worth trying if you are in the neighbourhood. Although Wuppertal has some other attractions, most tourists go to Wuppertal just for the Schwebebahn.

Tall structures above the clouds

Landfills galore

Landfills are among the most notorious pieces of real estate in the world.  Even a  hardcore recycler is still directly or indirectly responsible for creating trash that will find its way to a landfill.  It is a side effect of modern human life.  But landfills don't have to remain steaming heaps of smelly rubbish.  Take these ten former trash heaps that are now characterized by abundant green and diverse wildlife.

Pulau Semakau

This island off Singapore's southern coast used to be a fishing village.  When the government bought out the residents, Pulau Semakau became a dump for a majority of the city's waste after it was incinerated.  When the site was converted into a nature preserve earlier in the decade, impermeable lining was put around the area where the ash is stored.  There is a coral reef off the coast that teems with marine life, while birds and mangroves populate the shore.  It is possible to visit Semakau, but everyone who sets foot on the island is led by a trained guide in order to preserve the natural habitats.

Tifft, Buffalo

This nature preserve is located three miles from downtown Buffalo.  It is built above a landfill.  The park contains 264 acres and is a sanctuary for birds, deer, fish and other marsh creatures.  Fishing in the preserve is possible, but most visitors are bird watchers, photographers or people just out for a stroll in this conveniently located park.  Aside from being a recreation area, Tifft also has programs that seek to educate people about nature, conservation and area ecosystems.

Mount Trashmore, Virginia Beach

This affectionately named hill is, in fact, made out of compacted trash that is covered with clean soil.  The site was well planned and includes recreation areas like a basketball court, skate park and picnic area.  Unlike most of the other parks on this list, Trashmore is not a nature preserve.  However, its design and almost completely self-sustaining, low-water garden are recognized for their ingenuity.  Trashmore is a popular tourist attraction for resort-goers in Virginia Beach.

Bukit Tagar, Malaysia

Unlike the other sites on the list, Bukit Tagar is still a working landfill.  However, in addition to state of the art equipment and facilities, this area also has plenty of natural elements.  Reed beds are used to help absorb leachate and make the regular process of purification more efficient.  many tropical birds live in and around the landfill.

Millennium Park, Massachusetts

This 100-acre park has six miles of trails and offers some great views of downtown Boston.  Though the area is not one of the most naturally spectacular on this list, it was the product of a hard fought campaign by Mayor Thomas Menino, who sought to clean up Boston soon after he first took office in 1993.  The creation of Millennium Park, a former landfill that was shut down in 1994, was the first step in a movement that has made Boston one of the greenest cities in the US today.

Chambers Gully, Australia

Chambers Gully in suburban Adelaide, used to be a local landfill.  The land was reclaimed and naturalized almost completely by volunteers, making it unique from the others on this list, which were mostly built with government funds.  Now the land is a haven for wildlife, including koala bears, which are often seen perched in the park's many eucalyptus trees.

Hiriya, Israel

Hiriya is an unmistakably-shaped geographic feature south of Tel Aviv is first visible from the air.  Anyone flying into Ben Gurion Airport will see the mound from the air.  The site is currently the largest landfill in the Middle East.  But, Hiriya is in the first stages of a naturalization process that began in 2001.  When completed, the landfill will become part of a vast natural area known as Ayalon Park.   This project is expected to be completed in 2020 and will make the area one of the world's largest urban parks.

Sai Tso Wan, Hong Kong

This multi-purpose recreation area in Hong Kong is the first of the city's parks built on top of waste.  Great care was taken to seal the waste from the now-green surface.  In addition to multi-purpose sports fields, this area has a playground, track and picnic spots. Located in the Lam Tin area of Hong Kong, Sai Tso Wan has helped to increase the desirability of the neighborhood.  In addition, the park has become a poster-child for Hong Kong's green movement.  Wind turbines have been installed on park grounds, as has a rainwater collection system.

Freshkills Park, New York

When the entire process of greening is complete, Freshkills Park will be three times larger than New York's Central Park.  However, the project will take more than 30 years to complete.  That might seem like an unacceptable time frame, but considering that the park will cover what used to be the largest working landfill in the U.S. and create one of the largest urban parks in the world, the lengthy development process is understandable.

Cesar Chavez Park, Berkeley

This Bay-side park was built on top of one of the Bay Area's largest landfills.  The expansive lawns and recreation fields are a drfaw, but most people simply come to take in the view of the water's edge.  This is a smaller park that some of the others on this list, but the undeveloped north end is a haven for wildlife.  A wetlands area further adds to the park's eco-cred.  A mile-and-a-half-long trail circles the entire park and allows visitors to get a glimpse of the diverse landscape.

Engineering megaprojects

Megaproject… even the word sounds big! As technology evolves to meet the demands of our dreams, more and more wondrous feats of engineering will transform our world; and us with it. These 7 amazing engineering wonders push the envelope of what can be accomplished on Earth – and someday, beyond.

Dubai's World Islands

Following on the successful completion of other offshore artificial island communities like the Palm Islands, Dubai's World Islands was intended to be even more ambitious, not to mention larger. Imagine owning a private island in the shape of a country or continent, surrounded by the warm waters of the Persian Gulf – and your equally "worldly" neighbors?

While Dubai's vision of a 300-island floating world may someday come to fruition, things aren't so rosy at the moment thanks to the ongoing world economic crisis. As of late summer 2009 only a single island has been developed and it belongs to Dubai's ruling Sheik; "the rest looks like a pile of muck" according to a local realtor. With property prices crashing by 50 to 75 percent, many of Dubai's spectacular construction projects have been put on indefinite hold if not canceled outright.

Bering Strait Bridge

A bridge across the Bering Strait connecting Russia and Alaska? No, this is not a repeat from 11,000BC. OFF Architecture won the 2nd Prize in the Professional Category at the 2009 Bering Strait Project competition (yes, there is such a thing) with their grandiose and green bridge-tunnel combo. The design would greatly reduce circulation between the Arctic and North Pacific Oceans, thus cooling the former and mitigating the effects of global warming. Or so they say.

The 53-mile wide Bering Strait is surprisingly shallow – it was a natural land bridge back in Ice Age times – so OFF Architecture's design would reach from just above the water's surface down to the ocean floor 100 to 150 feet below. Such a design would necessitate circular "pass throughs" for migrating marine mammals and whales. The thought of a whale having a panic attack inside one of the tunnels gives a whole new meaning to "Thar she blows!!"

Large Hadron Collider

The Large Hadron Collider, or LHC being built by CERN is without question the largest and most complex machine ever constructed by Man. It has to be – the universe doesn't give up its deepest secrets very easily. The LHC is the world's largest refrigerator, requiring 10,080 tons of liquid nitrogen and nearly 60 tons of liquid helium to bring the temperature of the collider's huge electromagnets down to -271.3°C (1.9 Kelvin). Want more? The interior of the LHC's ring tunnel is the emptiest place in the entire solar system – the machine's particle beams will travel through an ultra-high vacuum with ten times less pressure than you'll find on the Moon.

Huge as it is, the LHC doesn't look too impressive from the air since the actual 17-mile (27 km) tunnel lies buried an average 330 feet (100 meters) underground. It IS big however – part of the ring is in France; part is in Switzerland. Since this short blurb gives only a hint of the LHC's workings, check out this Schoolhouse Rock style rap on the LHC from TeacherTube:

Gotthard Base Tunnel

The 95.3-mile (153.5 km) long Gotthard Base Tunnel network now being drilled out beneath the Alps, when finally completed in about ten years, will be the longest underground tunnel ever constructed. High-speed trains traveling at 155 mph (250 kph) will significantly reduce travel times between Zurich, Switzerland and Milan, Italy while at the same time relieving the bottleneck of commercial and passenger traffic now clogging existing mountain highways and train lines. Hannibal would most definitely approve.

The most difficult portion of the tunnel is the 57 km (35.4 mi) stretch that will run nearly 2,000 feet (600 meters) under the Gotthard massif below the existing Gotthardbahn track. It's estimated that 459 million cubic feet (13 million cubic meters) of crumbly, porous rock will have to be removed during the course of tunnel construction – that's enough to fill the Great Pyramid of Giza five times over. In the above image, one of the huge tunnel-boring machines is shown just as it breaks through to one of the completed sections of the tunnel.

Japan-Korea Undersea Tunnel

Though the shovels have yet to shift any dirt, the blueprints are ready for construction to begin on one of Asia's most momentous megaprojects: the Japan-Korea Friendship Tunnel. Or the Korea-Japan Friendship Tunnel – the fine details are still being discussed. Should the project get the nod from the politicos, work will begin on joining the southwestern Japanese city of Karatsu with the South Korean port of Busan with a 79-mile (128-km) train tunnel. The distance is more than three times that of the Anglo-French "Chunnel" but the technology is proven. As for North Korea's take on the project, either Kim Jong Il hasn't been told or everyone's scared to bring up the subject.

Space Solar Power Station

The challenges and difficulties involved in large-scale orbital construction projects are immense… yet someday they will be tackled as the demand for interplanetary spacecraft, space elevators and orbiting power stations becomes irresistible. The latter – a solar power station in geostationary orbit – is now on the drawing board and has been given a sky-high price tag of 2 trillion yen ($21 billion).

(image via: Bloomberg)

The project, conceived by the Japanese government and industry researchers, will see a space-based solar power station built in orbit 22,360 miles (36,000 km) above the earth. The station will generate 1 gigawatt of power from sunlight and beam the energy down to a receiving station where it can be used to power almost 300,000 homes.

Terraforming Mars

The most extreme engineering project in the history of the world will be performed OFF the world… on Mars. A variety of schemes have been floated over the past few decades with the intent of making Earth's nearest neighbor more amenable to life of the earthly variety – in other words, Terraforming. Naturally the scale is huge – comets may be redirected to impact the Red Planet to provide water for oceans, which would be seeded with algae in order to boost the oxygen content in the Martian atmosphere. Other schemes entail the placement of giant orbiting mirrors to focus sunlight upon Mars' polar icecaps, thus releasing liquid water and gaseous carbon dioxide to kick-start a greenhouse effect.

Terraforming Mars is no pie-in-the-sky scheme; it could be the salvation of our species should our actions on Earth continue to reduce our home planet's livability. It would be most fitting if someday, as predicted/depicted in The Million-Year Picnic, a short story from Ray Bradbury's book The Martian Chronicles, this scene should take place: A father answers his children's desire to see Martians by suggesting they look into the canal their boat is floating on… in which they view their own reflections.