Monorails

While we're talking monorails in the UK,
saw this the yesterday,

DRIVING the UK's oldest Monorail. It is 50 years old! Did it glide as softly as a cloud?
HubNut
121K subscribers
Dec 5, 2024 #monorail #transport #beaulieu
For half a century, the Beaulieu Monorail has transported visitors around the extensive Beaulieu estate, including THROUGH the National Motor Museum! Beaulieu very graciously allowed me to drive the monorail and explore exactly how it works. Thanks to Beaulieu also for the drone footage seen at the start of the video.
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Thank you for this visual feast from Hood. His work on Shipbucket deserves a wider audience.
 
Alaska's proposed 'God-Rod' route, piercing thaw-zone to 'solid', reminds me of a tale from Sci-Fi compilation called, IIRC, 'The Unorthodox Engineers'.

Tasked with building a rail route through a monogenetic volcanic region, where *any* level land bigger than a tennis-court could spawn a volcano, the team turned the notion on its head: They used very powerful 'shaped charges' to create a line of small, adjacent volcanos, used them as piers to support bridges...
:):):)

IIRC, there was another rail-based WTF: Faced with 'consolidating' a rail system with lines into crop-handling terminal having gauges ranging from cubit to two-metre, they devised a 'common' engine with wide cones for wheels. Okay, it could only run at 'jogging' speed, but that was a match for those 'mineral lines'...
--
For the record, the Chinese stabilise new rail routes across permafrost using 'heat pipes'. Their media claims these as local invention: IIRC, it was used for eg Alaskan pipe-lines sundry decades prior...
 
martinbayer said:
Admittedly I am an aerospace rather than a ground transportation engineer, but still, WHY???
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The theory was that by eliminating one track, it would be possible to eliminate hunting oscillation and achieve sharper corners through banking, making for much higher speeds than conventional railways.

Theory, of course, is a wonderful thing.
 
exclaimedleech8 said:
I hear those things are awfully loud
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No, all common types of monorails (true for rubber wheels and maglev) are very silent.

It might be, that your idea is based on the anti Maglev protests in Germany in the 80th/90th Every technological step forward resulted in fanatic protests from the lefties. There have been plans to built a high speed monorail from Berlin to Hamburg and Munich main station to the airport which both failed because of fanatical political resistance. At that time it was claimed, that monorails would be very loud. The argument was based on the fact, that the maglev prototype (Transrapid) was indeed louder at 400 km/h than a metro at 60 km/h, but there has never been an intention to let it drive with 400 km/h through a city center.
 
Scott Kenny said:
The Seattle monorail is quieter than a city bus.
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Same is true for the H-Bahnen in Dusseldorf and Dortmund and even for the Transrapid in Shanghai (when not driving more than 400 km/h).

I already mentioned the M-Bahn in Berlin, it wasn't really a monorail, but ''something with magnets'' which was regarded as technology from the devil back than. In fact, it had a very clever system which provided more than 90 % of the load being carried by static magnets and less than 10 % by rubber rollers. The problem was, it was too silent for measuring any noise in a city center, but they needed measurements of the system to prove it was silent. In the end, they switched of all safety system one night an conducted a high speed test run to get at least some measurable noise production. Unfortunately it ended with a crash on the terminal (without anybody getting hurt which was the final death blow to the system.
 
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Instead of monorails you get Intercity Express. As supported by the German federal government for decades and decades, whether SPD or CDU/CSU ruled.
Technology involved gets exported...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercity_Express
The ICE 3 also has been the development base for the Siemens Velaro family of trainsets which has subsequently been exported to RENFE in Spain (AVE Class 103), which are certified to run at speeds up to 350 km/h (220 mph),[1] as well as versions ordered by China for the Beijing–Tianjin intercity railway link (CRH 3) and by Russia for the Moscow–Saint Petersburg and Moscow–Nizhny Novgorod routes (Velaro RUS)[2] with further customers being Eurostar as well as Turkey and Egypt.
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... then, going by historical examples, is probably copied.
Could the political comments be toned down? A bit?
 
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exclaimedleech8 said:
What about us braindead slobs?
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You'll be given cushy jobs.
Grey Havoc said:
Again that would depend on the design and construction. Although local geology might also play a role in some cases as I understand it.
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Ironically, one of the places where monorails actually make sense, rather than being a gimmick, is in temporary systems on worksites where it's not cost effective to cut a roadway.
 
Reading „obscure monorail“ reminds me to the one shown in the attached photos. Built in 1993/94 by Arno Funke, alias „Dagobert“ , a blackmailer of a number of big malls. It was intended to transport the money, using just one rail of an abandoned rail track and nearly proved to be too fast for the pursuing police in the difficult terrain, but shortly before reaching its target, this monorail, carrying 1.4 million DM (the only time, a handover of real money was attempted) jumped the rail… so no success with this system, too, not even in the crminal world.
And yes, „Dagobert“ had become kind of an idol for many people in Germany back then.

Dagobert
 

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