Monorail on the edge of the Taunus
The monorail on the edge of the Taunus was a traffic project planned at the beginning of the 20th century , but never realized in the Obertaunus district in Hesse . The mainly from the major Berlin publisher August Scherl promoted train was project a noted trial, technical break new ground, but failed to apparent lack of technical preparation and political resistance.
Technical principle
This transport system was a monorail to Brennan .
A vehicle weighing 2.5 t was to be kept in equilibrium on a rail by high- speed gyrostats at 8,000 revolutions per minute and to move at a speed of 70 km / h. It should be able to accommodate about 40 passengers . A gyrostat is a gyro-based stabilization system (for the physical relationship, see gyroscopic effect ).
history
development
The Berlin newspaper king August Scherl (1849–1921) propagated a means of transport for local and long-distance traffic of the future that would soon span all of Europe in an elaborate advertising leaflet entitled “A new rapid transit system” (Berlin 1909) .
His son Richard Scherl allegedly developed the new technology "simultaneously and independently" together with the Englishman Louis Brennan with a financial investment of 6 million gold marks.
Demonstration systems
A model was presented to the public on November 10, 1909 in the exhibition halls at the Berlin Zoo . Brennan also presented his test car in Gillingham , England in 1909 . Also in London , Brennan's car was shown in operation at an exhibition in the White City in 1910 .
Ernst Ritter von Marx , then District Administrator of the Obertaunuskreis in Homburg vor der Höhe , was looking for an entrepreneur for an electric train that would open up the district at the foot of the Taunus Mountains . He turned to Scherl in December 1910 and received his promise to work out the project for the area free of charge. Von Marx visited the test facility in England in 1911 and reported:
- “The impressions that I received there - as a layperson, of course - of the system were above expectations. The car, which can hold around 40 people, is easily cranked like a car. He stands - what I initially thought was the most unlikely - without any aids and without any sway, with any weight shift by boarding and moving passengers in a standing position, starts with the greatest ease, forwards and backwards, takes a circle of 105 feet Radius with a speed of up to 70 km / h, stops at will even in the very sharp bend and stands still and safely even after the engine is switched off - as I was assured about 4 hours, ie as long as the gyroscopes are running. Its gait is naturally much quieter than that of a two-rail railway. For an hour I drove back and forth on the track, which is only about 200 meters long, of course, and in the narrow circle, and it worked perfectly. "
Project planning for the Taunus district
Although he had gained an “excellent” impression in London, Marx became more and more convinced that Scherl wanted to gain time because he was willing to build the railway, but would not be able to do so without Brennan. Brennan is probably the real inventor and apparently wanted to build the first railway in England in order not to lose his inventor fame to Richard Scherl, who could claim the invention for himself through the power of his father's press.
Despite these concerns and unfavorable omens, von Marx stuck to his option for Scherl. Like Kaiser Wilhelm II , whom he had been interested in the project, he was always open to such technical innovations.
The organs of the Obertaunuskreis dealt in detail with the routing and with the financing of the one-off project. The Lord Mayor of Homburg, Lübke, who voiced considerable misgivings about the company for his city, at least admitted that the 5 kilometer long test route beginning in Homburg was “a revolutionary innovation in railway construction ... an extraordinary sight”, the “a stream of Attract strangers ”.
Was not deterred by Marx and promoted the monorail with the words:
- “After all, our circle should also seek its pride in such an undertaking, which is so important for general cultural progress, which will attract the eyes of the entire educated world, which is perhaps destined to bring about a complete revolution in the transport network and the means of transport and thereby generate a turnover of millions, to break new ground. "
The local politicians could not bring themselves to a clear position. There were still numerous doubts:
- The proposed route Bad Homburg - Oberursel - Kronberg - Königstein was questioned due to its economic efficiency. Many places along the route initially wanted to be connected directly to Frankfurt am Main before a tangential connection should be considered.
- Other railway companies such as Frankfurter Lokalbahn AG already had concessions for the exclusive construction and operation in the Oberursel and Homburg area. They weren't ready to make concessions to another company.
- A bus connection between Königstein and Kronberg had already been set up on May 15, 1912 . Due to the concession there was a risk of a parallel route.
- There were also personal tensions between District Administrator von Marx and the representatives of the city of Homburg.
Withdrawal and abandonment of the project
Scherl used this situation to withdraw from the Obertaunus district. He now considered further test drives to be necessary before regular operation could be considered. For this purpose, a 6.5-kilometer test route was to be built between Weißensee and Hohenschönhausen near Berlin.
In a letter to the district administrator on October 13, 1911, Scherl justified his change of mind with the fact that a large number of the locals did not want the railway. He had gone to the limits of what was financially possible and did not see that he still had to make cash donations for the circle to accept his "gift".
The real reasons for his withdrawal are unknown. In the meantime he may have had concerns as to whether his son's “invention” was already mature. There had also been arguments with Brennan.
Scherl finally withdrew his application at the end of 1912. His rapid transit system has apparently never been implemented anywhere in the world. Stefan Gänsicke assessed this phase of the newspaper publisher's life as follows in an article entitled "100 Years of the Morning Post" published in the Berliner Morgenpost in 1988 :
- “But towards the First World War , Scherl began to crumble. He wastes his money in private life. He begins to spin, isolates himself. Do flight shows and promote the monorail. And in 1914 he sold his bankrupt company at a large profit to a heavy industry consortium in which Alfred Hugenberg ... took the lead in 1919. "
literature
- Walter Söhnlein: Bad Homburg vd Höhe. 150 years of public transport and urban structure. Zeit und Eisenbahn Verlag, Landsberg 1978, ISBN 3-921-304-41-6 .
- Walter Söhnlein, Gerta Walsh: Clear the way! - Railways in the Taunus 1860-1910-2010 , Societäts Verlag , Frankfurt 2010, ISBN 978-3-7973-1223-5 , pp. 71f.
- Walter Söhnlein: Transrapid am Taunusrand , in: From the city archive, 2001/2002 , Bad Homburg 2003
Web links
- The Monorail Louis Brennan (English)
