Monorail?

[stut]

The junction at the railway station end of the Newark Airport monorail is a sight to behold.

The Sydney one is such a vanity project. Clive James described it well: it goes from the heart of downtown Sydney to the heart of downtown Sydney after skillfully circumnavigating the heart of downtown Sydney.

Oh, and "I call the big one 'bitey'"

 

[jopsuk]

Once upon a time (1970s I believe) a Monorail was proposed for Manchester, running from Middleton to Wyhenshawe via the City Centre. Got replaced by Picc-Vic, then by Metrolink.

A couple of years ago, sone bright spark proposed a Monorail for Cambridge, with an artists impression of a Monorail (and track) crossing right through the middle of the world famous view of the west window of King's College chapel...

god, that. Though a Conservation area with highly protected views, not actually serving places anyone wants to go, with nowhere publicly accessible to fit a station over a mile.

 

[Busaholic]

This page of the Butlins Memories website gives the opening date of the monorail at Minehead as 13th May 1967:

http://www.butlinsmemories.com/other/monorails.htm

I had a daytime job in Minehead town centre and only worked two or three evenings a week at Butlin's, so maybe it didn't operate in the evenings or I was too busy working to notice! The most likely reason is that I'm losing my marbles, possibly.

 

[AndrewE]

I'd class leaving a pair of steel blocks where they shouldn't be after doing repair work as a structural issue.

Care to enlighten us?
A

 

[najaB]

Care to enlighten us?

The accident that Mutant Lemming made reference to was caused by contractors leaving metal plates welded to the running rail after overnight work. It would be comparable to NR contractors removing some rail and forgetting to put it back before releasing the possession.

You can read the accident report here: Accident report (in German). Or the Wikipedia article has a summary.

 

[Taunton]

I had a daytime job in Minehead town centre and only worked two or three evenings a week at Butlin's, so maybe it didn't operate in the evenings or I was too busy working to notice! The most likely reason is that I'm losing my marbles, possibly.

I remember dragging the family out to this when it opened. Butlins actually had TV ads featuring it. It ran in a sort of figure-of-eight route around the camp, crossing over directly above the swimming pool, where the two trains passed one over the other.

Possibly of equal interest to this forum they also had the real LMS 4-6-2 Duchess of Hamilton loco (now in the NRM0 on display for some years, which had been hauled down the branch from Taunton.

 

[Western Lord]

Monorails were one of the next big things in the fifties and sixties, alongside personal jet packs and supersonic airliners. One of the most useless predictors of future technology was Gerry Anderson. A couple of Thunderbirds episodes featured monorails in peril and there's also one set in the disused tube tunnels under London ("they used them before we had monorails" one of the characters points out). And of course everything is controlled by big chunky knobs and reel to reel tape recorders! He was still getting it wrong when he switched to live action with UFO, set in 1980, and having the UK driving on the right with gas turbine powered cars.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

Monorails were one of the next big things in the fifties and sixties, alongside personal jet packs and supersonic airliners. One of the most useless predictors of future technology was Gerry Anderson. A couple of Thunderbirds episodes featured monorails in peril and there's also one set in the disused tube tunnels under London ("they used them before we had monorails" one of the characters points out). And of course everything is controlled by big chunky knobs and reel to reel tape recorders! He was still getting it wrong when he switched to live action with UFO, set in 1980, and having the UK driving on the right with gas turbine powered cars.

What's the saying? Nothing dates quicker than predictions of the future!

 

[Taunton]

One of the most useless predictors of future technology was Gerry Anderson. A couple of Thunderbirds episodes featured ...

I don't know. Regularly appearing was the videophone on Jeff Tracey's desk with instant video communication anywhere. When the "baddie" phoned him, the screen showed 'Voice only selected'.

An absolute prediction of Skype!

And of course everything is controlled by big chunky knobs and reel to reel tape recorders!

I think it was Barbarella (Hollywood, 1968, starring Jane Fonda), set in the 41st Century, that had launch control for her rocket into space doing calculations on slide rules

 

[kevjs]

I don't know. Regularly appearing was the videophone on Jeff Tracey's desk with instant video communication anywhere. When the "baddie" phoned him, the screen showed 'Voice only selected'.

An absolute prediction of Skype!

But when the goodies called he never had to say "I couldn't hear you" "can you repeat that" and the picture didn't descending into Lego. Not all that accurate

 

[AndrewE]

The accident that Mutant Lemming made reference to was caused by contractors leaving metal plates welded to the running rail after overnight work. It would be comparable to NR contractors removing some rail and forgetting to put it back before releasing the possession.

You can read the accident report here: Accident report (in German). Or the Wikipedia article has a summary.

Thanks for that, interesting (good) that it was put down to failures of supervision rather than just blaming the infantry for a change.
A

 

[Ianno87]

The junction at the railway station end of the Newark Airport monorail is a sight to behold.

The Sydney one is such a vanity project. Clive James described it well: it goes from the heart of downtown Sydney to the heart of downtown Sydney after skillfully circumnavigating the heart of downtown Sydney.

Oh, and "I call the big one 'bitey'"

I remember the wonderful rotating pointwork at Newark!

 

[snowball]

I didn't know about it before but you can see it swiching in this video, at 00:30 and between 03:30 and 04:30.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31UttzV4kN8

 

[randyrippley]

....One of the most useless predictors of future technology was Gerry Anderson.........

Some technology he was way ahead on, in some cases its still in development.
Thunderbird 3 was powered by three particle accelerators, an idea that people are still working on.
The main propulsion source for Thunderbird 2 was a nuclear reactor cooled by Sodium-Potassium alloy (liquid at room temperature) which transferred heat to the two side "ramjet" pipes to heat the air flowing through so creating thrust.
NaK alloy is now the primary cooling circuit in nuclear submarines, and the air heating method was prototyped by both the Russians and Americans though its unclear if either actually test flew the concept.
Thunderbird 2's launch engines (used to get the aircraft flying fast enough to allow the nuclear heated ramjets to kick in) appear to have been Boron hydride fuelled jets (as used on the prototype XB-70 Valkyrie bombers).
Finally Thunderbird 2 was a wave rider, dispensing with conventional aerodynamics, and instead flying on a pressure pulse trapped under the forward fuselage. Again, the XB-70 used the same technique