Early Monorail Proposals in Russia

[rogerfarnworth]

I came across this when looking into early railways. ...

Ivan Kirillovich Elmanov (Russian: Иван Кириллович Эльманов) was a Russian inventor. During 1820, in Myachkovo, near Moscow, he built a type of monorail described as a road on pillars. [3] The single rail was made of timber baulks resting above the pillars. The wheels were set on this wooden rail, while the horse-drawn carriage had a sled on its top. [3] This construction is considered to be the first known monorail in the world. [5][6] The horse-drawn carriages travelled on an elevated track. One project envisaged using them to transport salt on Crimea. [9]

Early Monorail Proposals in Russia

Ivan Kirillovich Elmanov (Russian: Иван Кириллович Эльманов) was a Russian inventor. During 1820, in Myachkovo, near Moscow, he built a type of monorail described as a road on pillars. [3] The sing…

rogerfarnworth.com

Russia was a pioneer in the design and construction of monorails, from early horse-drawn models to later electrical and magnetic levitation systems. [2] Sadly, Elmanov could not find investors to fund for his project and stopped working on the monorail. In 1821, Henry Palmer patented his own (similar) monorail design in the UK. [2][3]

 

[Calthrop]

Most interesting -- thank you. Russia does indeed appear to have been "into" monorails, in so far as any country was. (Russia has something of a reputation for -- especially during Soviet times -- officially claiming that all manner of things / processes, were originally Russian-invented. If monorails had significantly "taken off" as a means of transport, Russia's claim on this theme could for once, have some justification !)

The Gatchina set-up, as pictured, seems a most odd thing -- prompting thoughts of the Wuppertal "suspended railway" gone wrong ...

 

[rogerfarnworth]

Yes, it does.

 

[mailbyrail]

The book Monorails - the trains of the future published in 2015 by the Monorail Society, California concurs.
It states ' Although it's possible others proceeded him, Russian inventor Ivan Kirillovitch has been credited with building the world's first monorail' along with some other details before moving on to Henry Robinson Palmer in the UK and his patent in 1821