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KEEP ALWEG
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SEATTLE, WA, USA
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SEATTLE, WA, USA
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THE ONE AND ONLY ORIGINAL ALWEG LEFT ON THE GLOBE
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THE ONE AND ONLY ORIGINAL ALWEG LEFT ON THE GLOBE
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PHOTO COPYRIGHT LINDSAY KORST
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A Special Page of
and its German/English part
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Text Copyright Reinhard Krischer Aug. 2002
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How often do "natives" read travel guides for their own hometown? How often does one give guided tours of one's city to vistors asking to see the highlights?
Probably not often enough and so as a native one gets so accustomed to the attractions of one's hometown that one takes them for granted.
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Take a look at the Seattle Center: Space Needle, Science Center, Monorail, EMP ...
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Tourists interested in towers with a view will visit the Space Needle. Tourists interested in architecture will visit Minoru Yamasaki's Science Center and ponder the similarities between his fusion of gothic arches and Far Eastern lightness and the ornamentation that later graced his tragic World Trade Center. Architecture tourists will also inspect the EMP and think of other places on the globe that were changed forever by Frank O. Gehry visions.
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But most of all will they be fascinated by the passage of the Monorail line through the EMP. It would be a rather provincial way to treat architecture if this line were to be amputated, - if the EMP were to be stripped of its symbolic artery connecting the 1960s with Century 21! An artery that - before it animated the EMP - had symbolized the passage of a city from Pacific Northwest anonymity to Century 21 fame!
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50 years ago in early October the first Alweg monorail test train was introduced to the public in Cologne-Fuehlingen, Germany. Today the city of Las Vegas is writing transport industry history by adding to its attractions a monorail transit line based on just this Alweg system and demonstrating what monorail is capable of. It could well be the forerunner for more metropolitan lines like it in other cities.
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In Asia monorails are already successfully in use, but it now looks as if the existing lines there are just the beginning of a monorail breakthrough. They too are (with few exceptions) based on the Alweg system.
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The Alweg Company in its day only built three commercial lines (the first was the Disneyland Park line, actually built by the Walt Disney Corporation, but with the help of Alweg) and the Seattle line is the only genuine Alweg line left in the world. With the Las Vegas and the Asian developments in mind the stature of the Seattle line is becoming more and more historically important, not only locally!
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Since the city of Cologne, original home of Alweg, missed the chance to preserve anything of the Alweg test facility or test trains Seattle is the only place that can claim to have preserved modern monorail history with an actual Alweg line and original Alweg trains built in Germany.
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The Alweg Company disappeared because after the death in 1961 of its initiator and financier, the Swedish industrialist Axel L. Wenner-Gren, his estate was, to put it mildly, mismanaged (even leading to court proceedings in the USA and Sweden). This is an important fact of Alweg's history because it discounts the theory that Alweg disappeared solely for lack of commercial success.
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With a bit of optimistic confidence in the future of monorail technology it ought to be quite clear that Seattle's Alweg Monorail already is and will be even more so in the future a historic transportation monument.
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Understanding that would also be a good motive for putting trust in a complete state-of-the-art monorail system ...
... and then finding a way to let a new line include the EMP passage ! Then the Alweg spirit and heritage would be saved!
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For a story that illustrates where "historic neglect" can lead to please see KALAKALA , - Seattle's Puget Sound Art Deco Ferry that was saved at the very last minute.
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Text Copyright Reinhard Krischer Aug. 2002
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EMAIL alwegbahn@aol.com
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