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| a better view of a three car train at Italia '61 (wikimedia) |
Alweg, an acronym of the Swedish founder Dr. Wenner-Gren's name (Axel Lennart WEnner-Gren) was established in January 1953 as Alweg-Forschung GmbH in a suburb of Cologne, Germany. The company was an expansion of the Verkehrsbahn-Studiengesellschaft (Transit Railway Study Company), which had presented its first monorail designs and prototypes the previous year.
Alweg's technology was licensed in 1960 by Hitachi Monorail, which continues to construct monorails based on Alweg technology. The world's busiest monorail line, the Tokyo Monorail, was completed in 1964 by what was then the Hitachi-Alweg division of Hitachi.
But Alweg ran into financial difficulties and the German operations were taken over by Krupp. Alweg's Seattle subsidiary Wegematic ceased operations in 1964, but some of the technology used was eventually acquired by Canadian company Bombardier
Among other systems, Alweg is noted for developing the original Disneyland Monorail System, opened in 1959, and the Seattle Center Monorail, opened for the 1962 Century 21 Exposition, both still operating.
This system shown in Turin was likewise built for an exposition.
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