The term monorail or industrial monorail is used to describe any number of transport systems in which a chair or carrier is suspended from, or rides on, an overhead rail structure. Unlike the well-known duo-rail system, there are many rail-guided transport options which have been described as monorails, so that tracing the history presents a
demarcation problem
In philosophy of science and epistemology, the demarcation problem is the question of how to distinguish between science and non-science. It examines the boundaries between science, pseudoscience, and other products of human activity, like art an ...
regarding what should be included and what should be omitted.
Common usage appears to define a
monorail
A monorail (from "mono", meaning "one", and "rail") is a railway in which the track consists of a single rail or a beam.
Colloquially, the term "monorail" is often used to describe any form of elevated rail or people mover. More accurately, ...
as any rail-guided vehicle which does not employ the coning action of conventional
adhesion railway
An adhesion railway relies on adhesion traction to move the train. Adhesion traction is the friction between the drive wheels and the steel rail. The term "adhesion railway" is used only when it is necessary to distinguish adhesion railways from ...
s to achieve directional stability. This would exclude
rack railways
A rack railway (also rack-and-pinion railway, cog railway, or cogwheel railway) is a steep grade railway with a toothed rack rail, usually between the running rails. The trains are fitted with one or more cog wheels or pinions that mesh with th ...
and
funicular railway
A funicular (, , ) is a type of cable railway system that connects points along a railway track laid on a steep slope. The system is characterized by two counterbalanced carriages (also called cars or trains) permanently attached to opposite en ...
s. Another generally accepted rule is that the guideway or track must be narrower than the car/vehicle. Elevated, supported, cable propelled systems like the
Cable Liner
The Cable Liner is a range of automated people mover products designed by Doppelmayr Cable Car for use at airports, in city centers, intermodal passenger transport connections, park and ride facilities, campuses, resorts and amusement parks.
The ...
and
MiniMetro
MiniMetro is a family of cable propelled automated people mover systems built by HTI Group. The vehicles either run on rails or an air cushion and have either a detachable grip (to the cable) or a fixed grip. Leitner has a test track for the v ...
are generally not considered to be monorails.
Bearing in mind the pattern of development of conventional
railways
Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a pre ...
, different criteria and measures of effectiveness were relevant at different times, and alternative design solutions were proposed. Hence, a monorail of the early 19th century bears little resemblance to current
designs, and were optimized for different performance objectives, within different technological constraints.
Early developments
![Lartigue Lokomotive](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/Lartigue_Lokomotive.png)
The earliest patent for a vehicle designed to run on a single rail can be traced to UK patent No 4618 dated 22 November 1821. The inventor was
Henry Robinson Palmer
Henry Robinson Palmer (1795–1844) was a British civil engineer who designed the world's second monorail and the first elevated railway. He is also credited as the inventor of corrugated metal roofing, still one of the world's major building m ...
, who described it as 'a single line of rail, supported at such height from the ground as to allow the centre of
gravity of the carriages to be below the upper surface of the rail'. The vehicles straddled the rail, rather like a pair of pannier baskets on a mule. Propulsion was by horse.
A line was built in 1824 in the
Deptford Dockyard
Deptford Dockyard was an important naval dockyard and base at Deptford on the River Thames, operated by the Royal Navy from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. It built and maintained warships for 350 years, and many significant events a ...
in London, and in 1825, another line was built in
Cheshunt
Cheshunt ( ) is a town in Hertfordshire, England, north of London on the River Lea and Lee Navigation. It contains a section of the Lee Valley Park, including much of the River Lee Country Park. To the north lies Broxbourne and Wormley, Hertfor ...
,
Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For govern ...
. Dubbed the ''
Cheshunt Railway
Cheshunt ( ) is a town in Hertfordshire, England, north of London on the River Lea and Lee Navigation. It contains a section of the Lee Valley Park, including much of the River Lee Country Park. To the north lies Broxbourne and Wormley, Walt ...
'', this line made history as it was the world's first passenger-carrying monorail, and the first railway line to open in Hertfordshire. In 1826 a company was formed to construct a line between
Barmen
Barmen is a former industrial metropolis of the region of Bergisches Land, Germany, which merged with four other towns in 1929 to form the city of Wuppertal.
Barmen, together with the neighbouring town of Elberfeld founded the first electric ...
and
Elberfeld
Elberfeld is a municipal subdivision of the German city of Wuppertal; it was an independent town until 1929.
History
The first official mentioning of the geographic area on the banks of today's Wupper River as "''elverfelde''" was in a docu ...
in Germany, but construction never started.
Throughout the 19th century, the Palmer design was improved, with the addition of stabilising wheels and additional rails (rendering a misnomer of 'monorail'). In 1829, Maxwell Dick introduced 'safety rails' below the running rails to reduce the likelihood of derailment. He
also articulated the main advantage claimed for this class of vehicle: 'the pillars or supports to be of different heights as circumstances of the country may require'. In other words, the system was better suited for crossing rough terrain.
In 1868,
William Thorold M.I.C.E. presented a paper proposing a monorail system that could be built at ground level in or alongside roads. The
Patiala State Monorail Trainways
Patiala State Monorail Trainways (PSMT) was a unique rail-guided, partially road-borne railway system running in Patiala from 1907 to 1927. PSMT was the second monorail system in India, after the Kundala Valley Railway, near Munnar in Kerala, an ...
and
Kundala Valley Railway
Kundala Valley Railway was the first monorail system in India, later converted to a narrow-gauge railway, that operated in Kundala Valley, Munnar of Idukki district in Kerala, India. The railway line had 35 km length.
History
Monorail (190 ...
were built in India on the principle that he described.
In 1869, J Haddon built a monorail in
Syria
Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...
to replace a mule train in military use. This embodied lateral guide rails, but was basically a pannier design hauled by a locomotive having double vertical steam boilers.
General LeRoy Stone demonstrated in 1876 his
Centennial Monorail
General Roy Stone's Centennial Monorail was demonstrated at the Centennial International Exhibition of 1876, the first official World's Fair in the U.S., which was held in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Dec ...
for transporting passengers, but failed to exploit the concept also on the
Bradford and Foster Brook Monorail, and this was closed after only one year due to a lethal boiler explosion in 1879. Around 1879, Joseph Stringfellow devised a similar "one-rail" system for possible use as a "cheap railway" in Australia.
By the end of the 19th century, the main proponents for the monorail were
Charles Lartigue
Charles is a masculine given name predominantly found in English and French speaking countries. It is from the French form ''Charles'' of the Proto-Germanic name (in runic alphabet) or ''*karilaz'' (in Latin alphabet), whose meaning was "f ...
and F. B. Behr. Lartigue constructed Palmer monorails in
Algeria
)
, image_map = Algeria (centered orthographic projection).svg
, map_caption =
, image_map2 =
, capital = Algiers
, coordinates =
, largest_city = capital
, relig ...
to transport esparto grass, to replace mules and camels, although the motive power is recorded as 'animal'. He also demonstrated his ideas in Paris (1884),
Westminster
Westminster is an area of Central London, part of the wider City of Westminster.
The area, which extends from the River Thames to Oxford Street, has many visitor attractions and historic landmarks, including the Palace of Westminster, Bu ...
(1886),
Tours
Tours ( , ) is one of the largest cities in the region of Centre-Val de Loire, France. It is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Departments of France, department of Indre-et-Loire. The Communes of France, commune of Tours had 136,463 ...
(1889),
St Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
(1894),
Long Island
Long Island is a densely populated island in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, part of the New York metropolitan area. With over 8 million people, Long Island is the most populous island in the United Sta ...
(1894) and
Brussels
Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...
(1897). Behr proposed a high speed monorail between
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...
and
Manchester
Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...
, but construction never started through lack of financial support.
The most famous Lartigue monorail was the
Listowel and Ballybunion Railway
The Lartigue Monorail system was developed by the French engineer Charles Lartigue (1834–1907). He further developed a horse drawn monorail system, which had been invented by Henry Robinson Palmer in 1821.
Lartigue had seen camels in Algeri ...
, in Ireland, which stayed in service from 1888 until 1924.
Part of this railway survives as a preserved railway and tourist attraction.
The last Lartigue design was built in 1924 between a magnesium mine at Crystal Hills, about 100 miles north of Los Angeles, and a railhead in Trona, California. This used petrol driven locomotives, and mounted the rail on a set of wooden A frames.
Suspended and bicycle railways
![Kearney high-speed railway](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Kearney_high-speed_railway.jpg)
In 1886, the Enos Electric Company demonstrated a suspended monorail on the grounds of the Daft Electric Light Company in the Greenville section of
Jersey City
Jersey City is the second-most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey, after Newark.[New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...]
, which was closer in its appearance to more modern monorails, but the most famous suspended monorail of this era was Eugen Langen's '
Schwebebahn', or floating railway, of
Wuppertal
Wuppertal (; "''Wupper Dale''") is, with a population of approximately 355,000, the seventh-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia as well as the 17th-largest city of Germany. It was founded in 1929 by the merger of the cities and to ...
, which entered service in 1901, and is still in daily use.
The Wuppertal monorail follows the
Wupper
The Wupper is a right tributary of the Rhine in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Rising near Marienheide in western Sauerland it runs through the mountainous region of the Bergisches Land in Berg County and enters the Rhine at Lever ...
Valley where a conventional railway is quite impractical. The suspended monorail, like the Palmer monorail appears a potentially superior solution over rough and mountainous terrain, but since the majority of the track is over more
favourable territory, it only rarely offers an overall better solution. Short sections in mountainous areas, such as a system built for the Ria Copper Co. by
Siemens
Siemens AG ( ) is a German multinational conglomerate corporation and the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe headquartered in Munich with branch offices abroad.
The principal divisions of the corporation are ''Industry'', '' ...
in the
Pyrenees
The Pyrenees (; es, Pirineos ; french: Pyrénées ; ca, Pirineu ; eu, Pirinioak ; oc, Pirenèus ; an, Pirineus) is a mountain range straddling the border of France and Spain. It extends nearly from its union with the Cantabrian Mountains to C ...
, seem to be the niche for this type of monorail. This particular example used a form of regenerative braking, such that the electricity generated by the full descending trucks was sufficient to drive the empty trucks back up the mountain.
In 1890 the
Boynton Bicycle Railroad
The Boynton Bicycle Railroad was a monorail in Brooklyn on Long Island, New York. It ran on a single load-bearing rail at ground level, but with a wooden overhead stabilising rail engaged by a pair of horizontally opposed wheels. The railway ...
was built in Long Island.
[Scientific American, 28 March 1891.](_blank)
/ref> Designed by Jose Ramon Villalon, who would later become one of Cuba's greatest statesmen, this railroad ran on a single rail at ground level, but with an overhead stabilising rail engaged by a pair of horizontally opposed wheels. The railway operated for only two years, but the design was adopted elsewhere.
In 1908, Elfric Wells Chalmers Kearney
Elfric Wells Chalmers Kearney (3 February 1881 – 15 April 1966) was an Australian inventor, engineer and author. Born in Geelong, Victoria in 1881, he spent most of his life in the United Kingdom. He was educated briefly at Ellesmere Co ...
(1881–1960) designed a monorail having an overhead stabilizing rail with spring-loaded vertical stabilizing wheels, but although a car was built, it never saw service.
From 1910–1914 a monorail system designed by Howard H Tunis was used on the Pelham Park and City Island Railroad in the Bronx
The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...
, New York City. On the first trip of the monorail, the vehicle, with the inventor at the controls, slipped off the supporting lower rail. Though some of the New York newspapers erroneously reported that the accident was a major catastrophe, that is not so, and only one passenger on the car claimed a minor injury. The car was quickly repaired and the monorail operated safely on a regular basis from 1911 until 1917, when it was dismantled by the military at the outset of World War I, because the terminal near City Island was requisitioned.
A propeller-driven suspended monorail, claiming the speed of aircraft with the safety and reliability of railways was designed by George Bennie in 1926, and named the 'Bennie Railplane
The Bennie Railplane was a form of rail transport invented by George Bennie (1891–1957), which moved along an overhead rail by way of propellers.
Prototype
Bennie, born at Auldhouse, near Glasgow, Scotland began work on the developmen ...
'. A demonstrator was built near Glasgow
Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated popul ...
in 1929, but the system did not progress further in the UK.
Russia worked on a system similar to the Bennie Railplane in the 1930s and were even planning a 332-mile line through Turkestan with a top speed of 180 mph. Their system was unique in that it had two side by side cars suspended on one rail, and it could actually dismount from the rail to cross rivers as an amphibian and then on the other side remount the rail. And while elements of this system were tested in Moscow, the Russian government instead built a conventional rail system.
The gyro monorail
Perhaps the only true monorail was the Gyro Monorail
The gyro monorail, gyroscopic monorail, gyro-stabilized monorail, or gyrocar are terms for a single rail land vehicle that uses the gyroscopic action of a spinning wheel to overcome the inherent instability of balancing on top of a single rail.
...
developed independently by Louis Brennan
Louis Brennan (28 January 1852 – 17 January 1932) was an Irish-Australian mechanical engineer and inventor.
Biography
Brennan was born in Castlebar, Ireland, and moved to Melbourne, Australia in 1861 with his parents. He started his caree ...
, August Scherl
August Scherl (24 July 1849 – 18 April 1921) was a German newspaper magnate.
Life
August Hugo Friedrich Scherl founded a newspaper and publishing concern on 1 October 1883, which from 1900 carried the name August Scherl Verlag. He was ...
and Pyotr Shilovsky
Pyotr Petrovich Schilovsky (russian: Пётр Петрович Шиловский) (September 22, 1872 – June 30, 1955 in Herefordshire) was a Russian count, jurist, statesman, and governor of Kostroma from 1910 to 1912 and of Olonets Governorate ...
. This was a true single track train which used a gyroscope-based balancing system to remain upright. All were demonstrated by full-scale prototypes, but development was effectively stopped by the First World War. Brennan's design was given serious consideration for the North-West Frontier of India, and a Schilovski monorail was proposed by the USSR
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
government between Leningrad
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
and Tsarskoye Selo
Tsarskoye Selo ( rus, Ца́рское Село́, p=ˈtsarskəɪ sʲɪˈlo, a=Ru_Tsarskoye_Selo.ogg, "Tsar's Village") was the town containing a former residence of the Russian imperial family and visiting nobility, located south from the cen ...
in 1921. Funds ran out shortly after construction began.
In the early 1930s, New York city considered a monorail system, which would have been the first in the US.
In 2018 a design for a gyroscopic rail car won first place at the German Mobility Award. In 2020 developers secured government funding of EUR 3.6 million to develop a prototype and it is expected testing could commence in 2022. The vehicles will be designed to run on existing but abandoned railway lines, passing each other on the existing rails.
Evolution of 'wheel on steel' monorail
The vehicles referenced above (with the exception of the still in full service Wuppertal monorail) are now little more than historical curiosities. The advantage of the monorail of crossing rough mountainous terrain was relevant to the time of expansion of railway networks over virgin country, and in most cases the conventional railway proved the
more appropriate solution, except for a few niches. Monorail tracks were rarely longer than 60 miles, and usually considerably shorter. The motor road vehicle finally displaced the monorail from its few niche applications.
Wheel on steel characterised monorails of this early era, just as it does conventional railways, although some bicycle railways could react against the stabilizing rail to increase adhesion, improving acceleration, braking and hill climbing.
The modern era: straddling beams
The development of automotive technology has given rise to a new class of monorail
A monorail (from "mono", meaning "one", and "rail") is a railway in which the track consists of a single rail or a beam.
Colloquially, the term "monorail" is often used to describe any form of elevated rail or people mover. More accurately, ...
which owes little to the work of Palmer and Lartigue. These vehicles are suspended from or straddle concrete beams, and use pneumatic tyres to improve adhesion and reduce noise compared with wheel on steel. They have more in common with guided buses than conventional railways. The beam is less obtrusive than an overhead roadway or railway, and the modern designs may have a niche in dealing with right of way problems in congested city centres, at lower cost compared with tunneling.
See also
* Gyrocar
A gyrocar is a two-wheeled automobile. The difference between a bicycle or motorcycle and a gyrocar is that in a bike, dynamic balance is provided by the rider, and in some cases by the geometry and mass distribution of the bike itself, and the g ...
* Monorail
A monorail (from "mono", meaning "one", and "rail") is a railway in which the track consists of a single rail or a beam.
Colloquially, the term "monorail" is often used to describe any form of elevated rail or people mover. More accurately, ...
* Meigs Elevated Railway
The Meigs Elevated Railway was an experimental but unsuccessful 19th century Elevated railway, elevated steam-powered urban rapid transit system, often described as a monorail but technically pre-electric third rail. It was invented in the US by ...
* Haddan 1872
References
Further reading
* Garner Adrian S 'Monorails of the 19th Century', 2011, Lightmoor Press,
* Barton H H C ''Monorails'', Institution of Loco Engineers, 6 February 1962
* Wheatcroft E L E, Woodhouse LC ''Monorails'', Proc. Inst Mech Eng Vol 181, 1967.
* Cousins H ''The Stability of Gyroscopic Single Track Vehicles''. Engineering, Nov 21, Nov 28, Dec 12 1913
* Carter F W ''On the Stability of Running of Locomotives'', Proc. Royal Society July 1928
* Wickens A H ''The Dynamics of Railway Vehicles on Straight Track: Fundamental Considerations of Lateral Stability''. Proc. Inst. Mech Eng. Vol 180,1966.
*{{cite book , last= Palmer, first= Henry, title= Description of a Railway on a New Principle, url= https://archive.org/details/descriptionarai00palmgoog, orig-year= 1823, year= 1823, publisher= J. Taylor
External links
Listowel and Ballybunion Railway
History of rail transport
History