The Chester Zoo monorail was an internal transport system at

Chester Zoo Chester Zoo is a zoo at Upton-by-Chester, Cheshire, England. Chester Zoo was opened in 1931 by George Mottershead and his family. It is one of the UK's largest zoos at . The zoo has a total land holding of approximately . Chester Zoo is ope ...

that operated from 1991 to 2019.

Description

The system was long and travelled on a single track elevated guideway, a straddle beam

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 accura ...

, to give views of the zoo grounds – the track crossed Flag Lane twice on its one-way circular route. The two halves of the zoo were connected by the system and there was one station in each part, one near the lion enclosure (Jubilee Square station) and one near the monkey building (Tsavo station, formerly known as Monkey Island Station). Each train on the system could seat 24 passengers between its four cars and a full tour took around fifteen minutes. The layout had a separate depot and control room and carried approximately 2,000 passengers per day. T&M Machine Tool Electronics upgraded the monorail's drive system and electrics in 2009, including conversion from DC to AC electrical operation and automation improvements involving the laying of over of cabling, at a cost of £300,000. The upgraded system used pairs of

AC motor An AC motor is an electric motor driven by an alternating current (AC). The AC motor commonly consists of two basic parts, an outside stator having coils supplied with alternating current to produce a rotating magnetic field, and an inside r ...

s for each carriage, with remote monitoring managed over a 5 GHz wireless link.

History

Chester Zoo, Jubilee Square Monorail Station (geograph 5022261)

The monorail was built and installed by Computerised People Mover International at a cost of $4 million and then opened by the

Duchess of Kent Duchess of Kent is the principal Courtesy titles in the United Kingdom, courtesy title used by the wife of the Duke of Kent. There have been four titles referring to Kent since the 18th century. The current duchess is Katharine, Duchess of Kent, ...

in 1991. Following the major improvements in 2009, the monorail was re-launched by music producer

Pete Waterman Peter Alan Waterman, (born 15 January 1947) is an English record producer, songwriter, radio and club DJ, television presenter, president of Coventry Bears rugby league club and a keen railway enthusiast. As a member of the Stock Aitken Waterm ...

during a visit on 23 July 2009, when Waterman drove the first loop of the new system. One week later a power failure occurred, requiring the first eight visitors of the day to be escorted off the monorail using a hydraulic lift. On 17 May 2012, Queen

Elizabeth II Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until her death in 2022. She was queen regnant of 32 sovereign states during ...

and

Prince Philip Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, later Philip Mountbatten; 10 June 1921 – 9 April 2021) was the husband of Queen Elizabeth II. As such, he served as the consort of the British monarch from El ...

took a tour of Chester Zoo in a specially redecorated monorail set painted in a

Union Flag The Union Jack, or Union Flag, is the ''de facto'' national flag of the United Kingdom. Although no law has been passed making the Union Flag the official national flag of the United Kingdom, it has effectively become such through precedent. ...

theme for their Diamond Jubilee tour of the north-west of England. About 2017, Redcroft Management Ltd conducted a "Monorail Future Options Appraisal & Viability Assessment" project to evaluate the commercial and practical viability of extending, replacing or closing the monorail, with options of funding by the North of England Zoological Society. In June 2019, Chester Zoo announced that it would be closing the monorail as it had become unreliable and now covered less than half the zoo because of expansion to over . The zoo also stated that it "no longer fits our vision for a world-class modern zoo". The system closed on 3 September 2019.

List of trains

References

{{Coord, 53.22685, -2.882, type:landmark_region:GB-CHW, display=title Buildings and structures in Chester Rail transport in Cheshire Closed railway lines in England Monorails in the United Kingdom