Elevated Railway. An elevated railway is a rapid transit railway with the tracks above street level on a viaduct or other elevated structure.
The railway may be broad-gauge, standard-gauge or narrow-gauge railway, light rail, monorail, or a suspension railway. Elevated railways are normally found in urban areas where there would otherwise be multiple level crossings.
Usually, the tracks of elevated railways that run on steel viaducts can be seen from street level. The earliest elevated railway was the London and Greenwich Railway on a brick viaduct of 878 arches, built between 1836 and 1838.
The first 2.5 miles of the London and Blackwall Railway was also built on a viaduct. During the 1840s there were other plans for elevated railways in London that never came to fruition.
From the late 1860s onward elevated railways became popular in US cities. The New York West Side and Yonkers Patent Railway operated with cable cars from 1868 to 1870, thereafter locomotive-hauled. This was followed by the Manhattan Railway in 1875, the South Side Elevated Railroad, Chicago, and the elevated lines of the Boston Elevated Railway. The Chicago transit system itself is known as L, short for elevated. The Berlin Stadtbahn and the Vienna Stadtbahn are also mainly elevated. The first electric elevated railway was the Liverpool Overhead Railway, which operated through Liverpool docks from 1893 until 1956. In London,
The railway may be broad-gauge, standard-gauge or narrow-gauge railway, light rail, monorail, or a suspension railway. Elevated railways are normally found in urban areas where there would otherwise be multiple level crossings.
Usually, the tracks of elevated railways that run on steel viaducts can be seen from street level. The earliest elevated railway was the London and Greenwich Railway on a brick viaduct of 878 arches, built between 1836 and 1838.
The first 2.5 miles of the London and Blackwall Railway was also built on a viaduct. During the 1840s there were other plans for elevated railways in London that never came to fruition.
From the late 1860s onward elevated railways became popular in US cities. The New York West Side and Yonkers Patent Railway operated with cable cars from 1868 to 1870, thereafter locomotive-hauled. This was followed by the Manhattan Railway in 1875, the South Side Elevated Railroad, Chicago, and the elevated lines of the Boston Elevated Railway. The Chicago transit system itself is known as L, short for elevated. The Berlin Stadtbahn and the Vienna Stadtbahn are also mainly elevated. The first electric elevated railway was the Liverpool Overhead Railway, which operated through Liverpool docks from 1893 until 1956. In London,
Wikipedia ...