The H-Bahn in Dortmund

Dortmund

Dortmund is a city in Germany. It is located in the Bundesland of North Rhine-Westphalia, in the Ruhr area. Its population of 585,045 makes it the 7th largest city in Germany and the 34th largest in the European Union....

 and Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...

 is a suspended, driverless passenger monorail

Monorail

A monorail is a rail-based transportation system based on a single rail, which acts as its sole support and its guideway. The term is also used variously to describe the beam of the system, or the vehicles traveling on such a beam or track...

 system. The system has been developed by Siemens

Siemens AG

Siemens AG is a German multinational conglomerate company headquartered in Munich, Germany. It is the largest Europe-based electronics and electrical engineering company....

, who call the project SIPEM (SIemens PEople Mover).

Two installations exist, one at the Dortmund university campus, the other at the Düsseldorf International Airport

Düsseldorf International Airport

Düsseldorf International Airport is the largest airport in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, and the third largest airport in Germany, handling 18.99 million passengers in 2010....

. While Siemens is no longer actively marketing the system, and will no longer carry out turnkey projects, new installations are still possible in collaboration with the Dortmund operating company.

Technical description

The cabins are centrally controlled and don't need a driver. The system can operate on a schedule or on-demand, whereby a passenger requests a carriage via the push of a button. The maximum speed is 50 km/h. The system allows forking by a system of switches in the carrier.

Suspension and propulsion

The carrier is a hollow rectangular box girder with a slit in the bottom through which the cabin is suspended at the running gear, whose two axles carry the load with a rubber wheel on both sides providing both suspension and propulsion. Two wheels run horizontally along the top and bottom of the interior side walls of the carrier box, providing horizontal guidance. Thus, the designation as a monorail system is to be taken with a grain of salt, meaning just that there is a single axis of suspension.

400-volt three-phase current is taken from four conductors at the side wall. Above those, a cable provides continuous wireless data connection between the train and the control center.

All contact between the suspended cabin and the fixed system is enclosed in the interior of the carrier box, protected from the elements. In this sense, the SIPEM suspension system is similar to the one used by the earlier SAFEGE

SAFEGE

SAFEGE is an acronym for the French consortium Société Anonyme Française d' Etude de Gestion et d' Entreprises and is pronounced SAY-fij in English....

 system in France, but is much narrower, both the carrier box as well as the open slit for the suspension.

Cabin

Each cabin is 8.232 metres long (9.20 m, including couplers), 2.244 metres wide and 2.623 metres high. The interior height for standing passengers is 2.003 m. It has two 1.350 m width automatic sliding doors at each side. The Dortmund cabin provides seating for 16 and standing room for 29 passengers, while the Düsseldorf airport version provides space for 15 and 32, respectively. The cabin is suspended below two motorized bogies, enclosed in the carrier rail. Each bogie is equipped with two 31 kW electric motors, providing a peak motive power of 124 kW.

The cabin shell weighs 4955 kg. The complete car weighs 8455 kg, with bogies weighing 1750 kg each. It can carry a useful load of up to 4923 kg and has a maximum gross weight of 13378 kg.

Switching

Switching is done with the help of the horizontal guiding wheels, where short blades on both sides of the common section of the carrier move as a canal of the same width as the carrying box to the left or right, while a long blade between the two forking guideways moves right or left to provide the horizontal guidance into the intended direction.

History

In 1973, the Federal Ministry made DM 22 million (€

Euro

The euro is the official currency of the eurozone: 17 of the 27 member states of the European Union. It is also the currency used by the Institutions of the European Union. The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,...

11,250,000) available for the research and promotion of this system. A test line was opened on 21 July 1975 in Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...

 by the former transport minister Hans Matthoefer with a length of 180 metres (approx. 200 yards). In 1976, the system was extended by 1.5 km (a little less than a mile).

Dortmund

The first publicly-funded overhead railway has run since 1984 at the University of Dortmund, where it initially just connected the north and south campuses. This stretch was opened on 2 May 1984 by Dr. Heinz Riesenhuber, and comprised 1.05 kilometre (0.652441373482297 mi) of track and two trains. The cost was approximately DM 24,000,000 (€12,270,000), of which 75% was funded by the German Federal Government, 20% by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia

North Rhine-Westphalia

North Rhine-Westphalia is the most populous state of Germany, with four of the country's ten largest cities. The state was formed in 1946 as a merger of the northern Rhineland and Westphalia, both formerly part of Prussia. Its capital is Düsseldorf. The state is currently run by a coalition of the...

 and 5% by the city of Dortmund

Dortmund

Dortmund is a city in Germany. It is located in the Bundesland of North Rhine-Westphalia, in the Ruhr area. Its population of 585,045 makes it the 7th largest city in Germany and the 34th largest in the European Union....

.

The longest span between support pillars is 38.5 metres (126.3 ft), where it crosses the university road, which bisects the two campuses. Just beyond the road the H-Bahn crosses through a nature reserve at its maximum elevation of about 16 metres (approx. 50 feet) above ground. In order to prevent passengers getting close to the track at stations, there are platform edge doors between the platform and the track. As soon as the vehicles arrive in the station, doors in the partition open automatically, along with the train car doors.

In 1993, following a three year construction period, a new 900 m (0.56 mile) long branch was opened, along with two new stations, one in Eichlinghofen and another at the S-Bahn station at Dortmund university. This construction included technology considered to be the first of its kind in Germany. The existing system was renovated, and equipped with technology which allowed determining the train's location with a much higher precision — within 3 cm (1.2 in). These changes allowed for a higher speed, and trains can now also follow each other more closely. Three new carriages were supplied by Siemens. An extension into the nearby technology park was opened on 19 December 2003, which means the current network, including this final 1.2 km (0.745647283979768 mi) extension, has a length of 3.162 km (approx. 2 miles). The building of this section cost around €15,500,000.

Line 1 operates between the Technology Park and Eichlinghofen, and during the day carriages arrive every ten minutes, stopping at the university and the S-Bahn stop, where there is a connection every twenty minutes to Dortmund city centre, and Bochum

Bochum

Bochum is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, western Germany. It is located in the Ruhr area and is surrounded by the cities of Essen, Gelsenkirchen, Herne, Castrop-Rauxel, Dortmund, Witten and Hattingen.-History:...

. Two trains serve line 1.

Line 2 is the original line between the North and South campuses of the university, and is served by a third train. A reserve fourth vehicle is available, and there is also a maintenance vehicle.

Further extensions to the H-Bahn network are being considered:

• Between the university and the central bus and train station of Dortmund.
• Eastward from the university, as far as to the Märkische Strasse, southeast of downtown Dortmund.

Düsseldorf Airport

A nearly identical monorail system called skytrain transfers passengers at Düsseldorf Airport

Düsseldorf International Airport

Düsseldorf International Airport is the largest airport in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, and the third largest airport in Germany, handling 18.99 million passengers in 2010....

. The system links a station at each Terminal C and Terminal A+B with the long-term parking facility and the long distance train station along a single line.

External links

• SIPEM Dortmund and Düsseldorf with technical descriptions
• Monorails.org on SIPEM
• Die H-Bahn an der Uni Dortmund (in German
  German language
  German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
  
  )
• Presentation of H-Bahn for a project in Moscow (in Russian) with videos and photo gallery