Help me identify this monorail or maglev train

General Questions
#1

Picture one: http://schend.net/images/movies/monorail.png

Picture two: http://schend.net/images/movies/monorail2.png

The images are frames from the movie The Apple, filmed in 1979 or 1980 in Berlin (at the time, West Berlin.) Sorry about the blurriness, they’re from Netflix streaming.

The station in the first image looks more like a maintainence facility than an operational train station-- there’s very little space for the platform, there’s no signage, and it doesn’t appear to be in a well-trafficked location. The second image shows some kind of radio tower, which might help place the track’s location.

The track looks extremely similar to the Transrapid maglev, but according to Wikipedia the test track for that system wasn’t opened until 1987. (It was tested in Germany, however, and is being developed by two German companies.) Could the pictured train be a prototype for the Transrapid system?

#2

Aaaand… I was looking for this thing all night last night, but the instant I post for help I think I found it. From the German Wikipedia: Internationale Verkehrsausstellung. Definitely in range of the movie crew. Definitely in operation in 1979. Definitely using the same track, or a track so similar I can’t tell the difference. (It even has the patterned metal bolts or whatever on the edges.) The only difference is the train itself, and even then they’re nearly identical except for the angle of the windshield and having grey instead of yellow-green stripes in the middle.

It has to be a slightly different train running on that same track. Earlier or later model perhaps?

#3

One last post: Transrapid’s website has a photo of the train from the movie: http://www.transrapid.de/cgi-tdb/en/basics.prg?a_no=31. So that settles that. Sorry all for the pointless thread. :slight_smile:

#4

Since the tower is the Hamburg TV tower, it must be this one: http://www.transrapid.de/cgi-tdb/en/basics.prg?a_no=31

#5

The Scarborough light rail in Toronto was envisaged originally to be Maglev, based on German tech. Eventually they determined the train did not “lev” well, especially when turning or going uphill, so they added wheels and standard rail and it became linear induction. That tech was contracted for and built starting in the mid-1970’s IIRC, so Germany must have been working on that for a while.

#6

We had one in Birmingham - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asVQzbOftqE - Sadly closed in 1995 and replaced by a cable system like the SF Trolleys.