alweg was a transportation company known for pioneering straddle beam monorails . citation needed contents 1 history 2 see also 3 references 4 external links history edit alweg was founded by swedish industrial magnate dr. axel lennart wenner gren in january 1953 as alweg forschung gmbh alweg research corporation based in f hlingen a suburb of cologne germany . the company was an outgrowth of the verkehrsbahn studiengesellschaft transit railway study group which had already presented its first monorail designs and prototypes in the previous year . the alweg name is an acronym of dr. wenner gren s name axel lennart wenner gren . alweg is best remembered for their role in building the original disneyland monorail system of disneyland which opened in 1959 and the seattle center monorail which opened in time for the 1962 century 21 exposition . citation needed both systems remain operational with the seattle center monorail still using the original alweg trains which have traveled over one million miles . a third system built in torino for the italia 61 exposition remained unused a few months after the exposition closed and was destroyed by a fire in the late 70 s most probably set by vandals . the remnants of the system were scrapped in 1981 with the north station now being repurposed as an office building . in 1963 alweg put forward a proposal to the city of los angeles for a monorail system that would be designed built operated and maintained by alweg . alweg promised to take all financial risk for the construction with the cost of the system to be recovered through fares collected . the city council rejected the proposal in favor of not building a transit system at all . this move was greatly resented by famed author ray bradbury who supported the monorail project and resented the later move to build a subway in los angeles . 1 alweg s technology was licensed in 1960 by hitachi monorail which continues to construct monorails based on alweg technology around the world . what was for decades the world s busiest monorail line the tokyo monorail was completed in 1964 by what was then the hitachi alweg division of hitachi and today s busiest monorail system chongqing rail transit is also based on alweg and hitachi technology . after alweg ran into financial difficulties alweg s german operations were taken over by krupp . citation needed alweg s seattle subsidiary wegematic ceased operations in 1964 but some of the technology used in the disneyland monorail was eventually acquired by the canadian company bombardier . citation needed in the 1960s there was a plan to build an alweg monorail in the high tatras in slovakia . citation needed see also edit trains portal list of monorail systems references edit bradbury speaks too soon from the cave too far from the stars c. 2005 for essay entitled l.a. we are the world a new millennium revelation 1989 external links edit wikimedia commons has media related to alweg . the alweg archives la monorail proposal the monorail society retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title alweg & oldid 725428315 categories alweg people moverscompanies established in 1953defunct companies of germanymonorailsscience and technology in swedenhidden categories all articles with unsourced statementsarticles with unsourced statements from october 2008commons category with local link same as on wikidata navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version in other projects wikimedia commons languages deutschfran aisitaliano norsk bokm lsvenska edit links this page was last modified on 15 june 2016 at 16 05 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; additional terms may apply . by using this site you agree to the terms of use and privacy policy . wikipedia is a registered trademark of the wikimedia foundation inc. a non profit organization . privacy policy about wikipedia disclaimers contact wikipedia developers cookie statement mobile view