October 1900, is still operated on scheduled excursion services, special occasions and for charter events. Incidents 15 January 1917 A train rear-ended another train that had stopped unexpectedly in front of it between Oberbarmen and Wupperfeld, causing the trailing car of the stopped train to fall off the track. There were two minor injuries. Subsequently, a safety device was developed to make derailments nearly impossible. 21 July 1950 The Althoff Circus organised a publicity stunt by putting a baby elephant on a train at Alter Markt station. As the elephant started to bump around during the ride, she fell out of the car and into the river Wupper. The elephant, two journalists, and one passenger sustained minor injuries. After that jump, the elephant got the name , meaning 'waterdive' in Italian. The official of the railway and the circus director were fined after the incident. 11 September 1968 A truck crashed into a pillar and caused a section of track to fall. There were no trains in the area at the time. This incident led to the use of concrete barriers around the pillar anchors. 25 March 1997 A technical malfunction caused a rear-end collision in Oberbarmen station between a structure train and the . There were 14 injuries, but no derailment. 12 April 1999 The line's first and only fatal accident occurred close to station during maintenance work in the early morning hours of 12 April 1999. Workers had forgotten to remove a metal claw from the track on completion of scheduled night work. The first eastbound train of the day hit the claw at a speed of around , derailed, and fell about into the river Wupper, killing five passengers and injuring 47, some seriously. The salvage operation took three days and nights to complete. Eight weeks after the incident, the Schwebebahn returned to operation. The cost of the damage was approximately 8 million marks. The judicial inquiry into the incident highlighted that the disaster was not caused by technical defects or mechanical system failure, but by the negligence of workers who had fallen behind in their schedule during the preceding night, and abandoned the work site hastily ten minutes before the train departed from the depot. Contributing to the accident was a lack of control of their activities by site supervisors. The works manager in charge of safety, and the workers dealing with the steel claw, were