Speaking as a civil engineer, a trouble with monorails that people miss is that FOUNDATIONS are usually most of the cost of building any form of land transportation. Laypeople seem to think bridge piers are just hammered into the ground like a wooden telephone pole. Actually, they are built upon a secure foundation below the ground. Once one builds a bridge pier, the cost difference between a monorail and a conventional railroad is trifling, compared to all the disadvantages of a monorail compared to a railroad.
Bangkok is a good place for comparing new monorail with new elevated heavy rail. The pillar foundations for both systems are completed in a short time using bored piling, but the completion of post-tensioned viaducts using sections dropped by linear cranes takes far longer and much more costly than craning a pre-cast monorail running beam, which is done simply with a conventional crane at each end. I watched construction of the yellow line from my apartment. Each beam between piers was placed in an hour or so having been driven to site by a massive truck.
@@andywarne963 You can use pre-cast bridge sections for rail (or anything else) too, in fact for rail it's easier because you don't even need to make specific curved sections for where there is a curve in the track, you can just use straight sections and have them be wide enough to accomodate the track going through the curve.
In dense urban settings your critique doesn't entirely negate certain advantages of monorails, which can fit more easily into a three dimensional cityscape. Thinking here of some Asian examples which penetrate skyscrapers and follow cliffs above rivers. Hardly conditions applicable to the UK, I realise ..... unless Cheddar Gorge needs rapid transit any time soon!
Foundations, points, there are loads of issues. however, I’ve sold Monorails to Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook, and it sure put them on the map
I rode the monorail at Disneyworld in Florida, years ago. I thought it would glide as softly as a cloud, but no. It bumped and shook like a bus on the cracked and broken Main street of Springfield.
Yes, this video was only missing a reference to The Simpsons. Perhaps he should have said it was almost tried in Springfield until the citizens regained their senses.
‘The future is jet-powered helicopters’ - Well in the 1980s I did fly into Heathrow in a turbine-powered helicopter: the Gatwick-Heathrow Seaking appropriately registered G-LINK.
The monorail episodes of Thunderbirds, 1966 (Brink of Disaster and the one with Lady Penelope on a ladder in front to the train), formed my idea of monorails. They always seemed a bit daft. Massive things hold a rail in the air Vs 2 things solidly on the ground. I was not surprised when Springfield's monorail was as bad as those of Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook (as already mentioned by others).
the major practical disadvantage of monorails compared to conventional railways is that it's much harder to build junctions with only one rail; while you can build points on conventional railways, a junction on a monorail either requires the entire train to be shifted onto the other track, or the entire track to be shifted before the train gets onto it this is why the monorails that do exist are links between two destinations, rather than part of a wider public transport network - they are effectively high-speed horizontal lifts that look like trains
Well, TBF. there are isolated cases where a monorail exists due to a specific situation where it was the best way to handle the problem: Sao Paolo has a monorail that serves an area of the city on steep terrain that requires a mode that can handle high grades, and Tokyo has their monorail connecting Haneda Airport to downtown that threads through heavy density. In nearly all other cases, I think a monorail gets proposed because it looks like what all the sci-fi literature of the 50's and earlier told us the future would be, no matter how impractical.
Yeah, the one thing monorails have going for them is that they're pretty much elevated by default. So if you're building a system which is mostly or entirely elevated, a monorail is probably cheaper than an elevated conventional rail line, and adding extra overpasses/bridges makes no difference. Ofc conventional rail is cheaper if it can run on the surface, but in places where that isn't possible (as in your examples), monorails can make sense.
@@antontsauIronically in their final years, they flew the DHC-6 Twin Otter, so even New York Airways wasn’t entirely convinced helicopters could provide all their services.
/nerdmode on/ Not strictly a helicopter; the rotodyne combined a tip-jet powered rotor with fixed wings, with forward propulsion by turboprops, which also provided compressed gases for the tip-jets (I don't think there was combustion at the rotor tips--they weren't quite that, err, ambitious). Not a dumb proposal for the problem of low forward speeds of helicopters, and less mechanically challenging than the USMC Osprey. /nerdmode off/ Obviously another solution that couldn't handle the mass transit part of the traffic, but the idea of an expensive but quick way of getting to Central London (or, indeed, other destinations) is not obviously nuts. What killed it was the noise. As a little boy, I got taken to Farnborough, and I saw and heard it. Noisy. Not as noisy as a lightly-loaded Vulcan doing a near-vertical climb immediately after take-off, which was felt rather than heard; but you wouldn't want to work anywhere near where the Rotodyne might take off or land.
In practice, Monorail has some limited use cases where choosing it over regular rail is actually the correct choice. Largely because regular rail's limitations render it unsuitable. Outside of those, the only thing it really has going for it over regular rail is novelty, in exchange for a bunch of extra cost and complexity. As such, it quickly wanders into the realm of the lower end of the gadgetbahn scale when used in sitautions where standard rail would have been perfectly suitable. Noticeably, when monorail is actually the correct choice, it's generally Not the train's speed that is the important part, it's that most varieties of monorail have an easier time with steeper slopes and sharper bends than standard rail does, which is an advantage when you're building in areas with a lot of changes in elevation or where you can't knock down any inconvenient very tall buildings and have to follow a street grid somewhere which doesn't have 12 lane intersections everywhere (also the entire track is basically bridges/elevated anyway no matter what you do so once you nail down that you're building a monorail you get less constant arguing about the budget for bridges or elevated sections, or people insisting it should be in a tunnel in areas where doing so would be a dumb idea, etc.)
I think Japan has the largest collection of monorails used for transport, but I think nearly each system is a different method. Both beam riders and suspended types are used. But there seems to be little commonality in the systems. And I just discovered China has the longest monorail system(or line) because. Side note: In the original movie "Fahrenheit 451" a monorail was used to demonstrat the modernity of the time. And just discovered it was in France, and dismantled not long after filming(Thank you IMDB).
@@mittfhWuppertal in particular has the issue of geology, where the soil along the riverbed was unsuitable for the technology at the time to dig tunnels... nowadays tunneling technology has vastly improved, the Wuppertal monorail likely wouldn't be built today. But in Chongquin this still rings true.
They built a monorail in Sydney (Australia) 30-something years ago. Nobody ever used it and they eventually took it down. Now they have a tram line which doesn't exactly run the same route, but it's not far off. I'm sorry to say I never went on the monorail when it was still there
There was one other proposal of a Heathrow Monorail I'm aware of. In 2003, Hounslow Council had committee meetings regarding a monorail from Hammersmith to Heathrow or Kingston to Heathrow. The document is "A4 Corridor - Monorail" and it made a fascinating read.
The third monorail proposal to Heathrow might have been the one from French company SAFEGE, who made the monorail in Fahrenheit 451. Interestingly, this was the work of Hugh Fraser, who had been George Bennie's engineer. German company ALWEG, also had a proposal for a Heathrow monorail. They were responsible for the Disney monorails, and the Tokyo monorail to Haneda airport. So that's four!
@@julesmo323 I was six. Any new experience when you are six years old feels good and offers prospects for what could be. I am not going to apologise for having a childhood. Have you ever been on a monorail, had a childhood, or were you born an adult?
@@paulblake1164 Why take it so hard. Do you not have the ability to laugh at a simple joke. What has your life become that you live on such a razors edge that you take offense at such a comment?
Well done for saying Milngavie correctly. I live there and most call centres struggle. When I was at school I just assumed all towns had histories of experimental rail way systems.
There was a monorail in Birmingham, linking the train station to the airport, it was there from 1984. It was the first maglev train in the UK. Then it was replaced by a cable car system called the Air-Rail Link, to which opened in 2003.
I've been on a monorail in SE Asia. Max speed, 30 kph. Shook like it was coming off the rails, uh, rail. A month after I was on it, a wheel came off and went through the hood of a taxi below.
What we really need for the Heathrow link is a giant roller-coaster. Good for the environment, since it will be gravity powered, just needing a lifting mechanism at the end, and entertaining for the tourists too. Or if that proves too expensive, a dedicated electrically-assisted-pogo-stick pathway would take at least some of the load off the existing transport infrastructure. We have to think outside the box...
A few more proposed lines to keep the topic going: - A 2008 proposal to run a monorail along the M4 between Reading and Heathrow. - The Windsor Link Railway (which would be an interesting video in itself) which had a proposed connection to Heathrow Terminal 5. - The "Heathwick" high speed line between Luton and Gatwick via Heathrow. First proposed in the 1990s and again in 2011. - Heathrow Airtrack between Waterloo and Heathrow Terminal 5. - A BAA proposal to run Heathrow Express services to St Pancras via the Dudding Hill line. - Many proposals to extend from Heathrow Terminal 5 to the Great Western Main Line at Langley. - HS4Air to connect HS1 and HS2 via Gatwick and Heathrow.
Or maybe he just realises that "gadgetbahn" is one of those pointless neologisms that means nothing because it has no real definition. Sure, you could define it as "novel transport system that I don't personally like" - but that's a definition that's so subjective it's essentially worthless. Honestly, whenever I see someone using it my immediate reaction is "OK, you are an idiot".
@@TrimeshSZ Gareth Denis has a flow chart on such things. You should check it out. Also Gareth in general, he has a lot of good content and knows his stuff when it comes to the world of rail based shenanigans.
@@TalesOfWar So you are basically saying I should take the personal position of some little twat on RU-vid as being definitive? Thanks, but no thanks. Actually, he was precisely the person that got me annoyed about the term "gadgetbahn" in the first place.
The Wuppertal monorail is amazing and over 100 years old. Much better to go over houses than under them in heavily mined (excavated) and waterlogged land
There's actually surprisingly many monorails (which is to say, more than 2) in Germany. There's one in Wuppertal which I believe is the oldest still operational one in the world, and a fairly recent one in Dusseldorf. The big issue with monorails is that the tracks are a lot more expensive than regular railway tracks, even if they do have a smaller footprint due to being able to be built on elevated pylons. That small footprint is why there's multiple monorails in Japan, where cities are extremely densely built and acquiring the land needed to build a new railway line in a city might be extremely expensive if not impossible. So the despite costing more per mile of track the monorail can still end up cheaper because you need a much smaller area of land. The reason Dusseldorf got its monorail was the same: they needed a rail connection from the new airport to the city center, but there wasn't enough space available for a conventional rail line while the monorail could just have its pylons placed between the Autobahn lanes.
In one of those odd coincidences, this vid published on the day Heathrow's "conventional" rail services are having a meltdown and only the Tube can reach the Terminals. This reminds me of the day Tom Scott published a video about Tower Bridge on the day Tower Bridge's bascules got stuck in the up position for the afternoon. Influencers eh.
And yet again it's a train where it's all seats and no space for bags! I just did a trip to London (from the US) and It's insane that every transport option to an airport has space for 50 people per carriage, yet only 6 bags, or 8 if you stack them creatively. On the train I took to Glasgow I had 3 large 50lb suitcases for me and the family, which I had to keep next to the doors because (again) there was only space for 3 or 4 pieces of luggage. I was even told off dismissively by the conductor who asked why I even needed so many bags, to which the answer was "because I'm visiting for 4 weeks and I also have a wife and 2 kids"
As a child (I must have been about 4 or 5) my Dad took me to Manchester Town Hall to see a model of the proposed Monorail to be built up Rochdale Road from the City Centre to Middleton, as it would have affected where we lived. It was going to be finished by 1970. I’m still waiting for it 50 years later.
The early attempt at 1:00 shows the key elements and shortcomings of all modern monorails: 1. A top riding "monorail" is actually 3 or 5 rails. One top support rail, and either 1 or 2 stabilizing guide rails on each side. If the support wheels have double flanges, just 1 stabilizing rail is needed. If it's flangeless, you need 2 stabilizing guide rails on each side. 2. Switches require moving a whole section of track, rather than just points. In this case, only 3 of the possible 4 routes are actually accessible. 3. The gap in the car bottoms for the rail wastes space. 4. The whole thing is perched on top of the rail, and is thus inherently unstable. 5. In this early case, 2 boilers to be fed. Suspended has slightly fewer problems, but the support structure tends to be bigger and more oppressive.
If the advertisement at 2:58 were the poster for a film instead of an actual proposed transit system, I would instantly conclude, "Reg Hill and Derek Meddings worked on this." The aesthetic is so absolutely prefigural (is that a word? it is now!) of _Thunderbirds_ et al.
These were the stuff of the Eagle magazine in the 50salong with Hollywood films portraying the future. There is of course one vey successful airport to city centre monorail, using British technology, namely the Maglev line between Shanghai Airport and downtown Shanghai. Quite an experience to ride.
The typeface (or was it hand-written or stencilled?) on those drawings of the later scheme took me back to the late-80s working for a small company, when I was doing the pipework drawings and a part-time driving instructor was doing the parts manufacture drawings - his lettering was just like that, very old-school, whereas I used the ISO 3098-1 stencils.
The idea of a rail link to Heathrow via the Feltham line makes me think of how they could have replaced the Eurostar terminal at Waterloo with a central air terminal. Have express trains to Heathrow (via the Feltham line with a new link), and to Gatwick (using the old Eurostar flyover onto the Southern line). There would be plenty of space for the check in counters and you'd have luggage cars on the trains to carry the luggage. Waterloo would also be much more convenient as a terminus for an airport express than Paddington or Victoria, there's more around it and it's better connected to more of central london.
If you mean the grey one with red stripes, no, that's the Shonan Monorail in Japan. The Wuppertaler Schwebebahn (similarly running suspended from the rail) is older and seemingly more heavily engineered with massive steel arch supports.
Monorails have no global advantages over usual (including elevated) rail as fast transport. Similar construction cost, similar performance. It may have sense in opposite use, dense urban area with tight curves and no ground space, something like elevated tram, but in this case it starts to compete with cars and buses, not only slow small onstreet tram, and loses again. Propeller-driven (with onboard engine?) monorail is nightmare at all. The last what Oxford st lacks is wannabeplane "flying" 10m off ground with all noise, blowback and, as bonus, rail supporting structure. And especially if its mass transit like huge airport link, where usual trains can use already existing rail structure on the other end of route. Some special spur to airport, mb elevated or underground, and then - yes, Heathrow Express, CAT in Vienna, Skytrain in Brisbane, Sbahn in Munich and so on - regular existing rail pathes all over the city, 4-10 carriages at once, without need to build something new specific right in the densiest place in town.
Thanks Jago, fascinating stuff. The monorail vehicle artists impression with a propellor on the nose reminded me of the experimental train that ran in Germany before the Second World War. It was called the Schienenzeppelin, because it resembled an airship or Zeppelin. It was designed and developed by the German aircraft engineer Franz Kruckenberg in 1929. Propulsion was by means of a pusher propeller located at the rear: it accelerated the railcar to 230.2 km/h (143 mph) on the Hamburg to Berlin mainline setting the land speed record for a petrol powered rail vehicle. Only a single example was built, which due to safety concerns remained out of service and was finally dismantled in 1939. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schienenzeppelin)
The main problem with monorails is that they almost always make no sense in terms of capacity, engineering, economics, or energy efficiency. In very rare and special cases, they may work. They have to be light, which limits their capacity (as transportation capacity goes, Monorails are considered "Light rail." To get enough capacity, the trains would be so big and heavy that the monorail beams and their supports would become ridiculously expensive. They run on MANY rubber tires to run on and to keep them upright, which reduces efficiency and will eventually fail. Switching tracks with monorails is very complex and expensive compared to normal rail. They ALWAY have to be supported above the ground; it is is a continuous bridge and bridges are expensive. They don't integrate well with other rail systems. To mention a few of the serious drawbacks. Even Disney World, which is a showcase for the monorails when if first open quickly had to add boats to get people to the parks (for a while they ran trams until the boats were completed).
The construction problem I see with monorails (and Ive been on the one in Wuppertal) is that they seem to have a lot more metalwork and/or concrete than traditional rail systems. That probably makes them more expensive from the off. Add in some visual intrusion/clutter and people are off-put. The mag-lev shuttle at Birmingham airport is quite a nice idea but is not particularity fast. Its not exactly meant every airport (or other facility) has to have one. Still, you have to give inventors some space to come up with something novel. You never know, one may yet hit on something really good.
There isn't a maglev at Birmingham Airport anymore. It was quite unreliable so was replaced by a more conventional cable-hauled system (on the original elevated structure)
I'm from Bearsden (the next town along from Milngavie - pretty good pronunciation by the way 😜) and my dad remembers seeing the remnants of the test track AND bits of the actual vehicle out in a field, in the early fifties. There's a model of it in the Glasgow Riverside Transport Museum. Good video, as ever, thanks! xNfMx
What, no mention of The Simpson's "Marge vs the Monorail" season 4 episode 12? BTW - monorails have also caught on in South America as Sao Paulo now has two lines. Here in the states Seattle decided to go with Light Rail (trams) instead of extending the one mile 1962 Worlds Fair monorail.
Thanks Jago, although when I first saw the title of the video I did have to check the calendar to make sure that I had not just woken up from a long sleep and it was now April 1st in an indeterminate year!
Thanks Jago! I can't hear the word "monorail" without the song from The Simpsons entering my head. I now have it stuck as an earworm! Otherwise, great video.
It's not a monorail, but there are still the driverless electric pods at Heathrow Terminal 5 that are low speed alternative type of transport link. They run between the car park and the terminal.
I’ve only managed the Beaulieu motor museum monorail. Sigh. Slightly south of Beaulieu I recently visited Gatcombe Church on the Isle of Wight. A certain grave stone of Sir Sidney Vectis may be of interest? He built the ill fated Chillerton, Gatcombe, and Newport canal. Maybe at some point Jago you could cover the story?
Having looked at videos of monorails in Japan, it seems that the advantage of one is that you can superimpose a monorail over an existing streetscape. If you want to build through an existing urban area, you can build a tram along the road (very slow). or build a conventional train or LRT service, which will mean demolition of huge swathes of buildings but is faster, or go underground at monstrous cost. However, of course, the snag is that the monorail is pretty much a blot on the streetscape, and all the stations are at high level requiring lifts etc, and it won't be cheap. In the case of accessing Heathrow, there is no particular advantage to a monorail over a conventional trainline, and speeds on Monorails tend to be somewhat lower than on a decent heavy rail service. So, no, not the ideal solution.
The problem with monorail is that you do pretty much everything the monorail does... by just elevating normal rail. And it's not even much more expensive than building monorail at that point. However, once you get out of the densely build urban landscape, you can bring down the elevated rail to ground level and build it fairly cheaply, while monorail still has to be build in the same expensive manner. Not to mention increased costs when it comes to tunnels, as you'll need a much bigger bore for Monorails, and need much more space if you need switches.
@@Izithel Yes, an elevated railway like Chicago or light rail like Docklands would seem just as effective as a monorail, and simpler to design and operate.
@@Izithel Yes, though the infrastructure required for a monorail is a bit less than elevated heavy rail, as it can handle sharper bends and bigger gradients, though, yes, out in the sticks, the advantage of a monorail vanishes! If you want an entertaining video, look on RU-vid for videos on the Shonan monorail to Enoshima near Tokyo. Its entertaining as its like a roller coaster (not for vertigo sufferers!), and even goes through tunnels, but its an example of how the monorail can thread its way through an urban area without blitzing it - I don't think that the same thing could be achieved with a conventional railway on a viaduct without being far more intrusive.
@@timbounds7190but the competion is not between heavy rail and monorail it is between conventional rail and mono rail. For a conventional rail system with the same loading gauge as a monorail you would be looking at the 1067 mm or perhaps 3 foot rail gauge. That is narrow gauge. Now the only narrow gauge I have ridden has been steam powered over wooden trestles , but the curves and the grades were amazing. A modern such system would seem to me to be able to do what a monorail can do and run along the ground when space is available.
@@francesconicoletti2547 Not sure I agree...if you have a narrow gauge train that could go round very sharp corners and up steep hills, this implies that carriages would have to be small thus limiting passenger capacity and speeds would be very low - and you'd still have to bulldoze a ground level route through an urban landscape, albeit a narrower one. Ironically, most Japanese (non-shinkansen) lines are 3'6" 1067mm gauge, but the rolling stock loading gauge is enormous, enabling the huge carrying capacity of Japanese commuter trains, including double deck cars.
I lived near Millguy for a year, but by that time no trace of the test track remained. Apparently it lay derelict for several years before being dismantled in the 1950s. However, the building which served as Bennie's workshop is still standing, and it is marked with a plaque.
"I understand they're popular in Asia," he says over a picture of a type of monorail known for its popularity in Germany. :D It was so striking, it's got me wondering if it was deliberate. :) Incidentally, the capacity issue reminds me of some of my OpenTTD games where I had to use lower-speed higher-capacity trains inter-city because the express trains just didn't have the capacity. The game has been rebalanced to improve that, but I still like to add very fast futuristic trains anyway.
Blaenau Ffestiniog once had a monorail. It was rented out to James Bond , you only live twice. When it's creator the incredible Rich Morris died his track, wagons and steam engine, The Mono loco , all went to the Tanat valley railway. They also have a semi automatic industrial tipper set up for civil engineering projects. So there. Dare you visit Blaenau Ffestiniog where we can show you some other amazing railways including the UK's steepest under ground funicular and the county that once had the greatest number of incline railways in the world.
You do know (of course you do) that there is a monorail in Wuppertal, Germany, that has successfully used the local river Wupper to travel through the town since 1901. The town being in a valley and not many roads there due to the steep incline of the valley bed, the monorail was a way of using the river as a means of transportation. In 1950, the "Schwebebahn" transported an elephant as a gimmick for a circus, and it jumped out of the waggon 10 metres to the flat bed of the river below. It was unharmed because the bed was muddy at that point.
Monorails are also Peak Gadgetbahn and only make sense if you have a city in a valley or a hilly ares, otherwise you are always better of with a boring Tram or Light Railway System that doesn't run on a proprietary System, which is also a major problem and not often enough tackled as problem: you bought something and then in 10-20 years when you need replacement or addional vehicles or spareparts, you can't get them because the manufacturer closed down or gave up on that system
Also what people should consider when thinking monorail...comparing it not just to "conventional" rail, but also to elevated light rail, which can offer some of the benefits of monorail, but switches are simplified, among other benefits. Funny thing, sometimes heard the DLR incorrectly misidentified as a "monorail" by people who are unfamiliar with it. I think the thing about monorails is because they look so futuristic/sci-fi-ey.
Monorails in the west have been consigned to amusement parks rather than being used for actual transport. In China, Japan and Malaysia they are very effective at providing suburban transport and airport links with China now actively looking at longer internal routes using Maglev as replacements for conventional rail and air travel. We seem transfixed in continuing to use metal wheels on metal rails...
Following the Reading line from Clapham? So a few road bridges to clear, and Putney, Richmond and Twickenham stations, followed by the curve for the the Kingston loop. That'll need some tall towers to hold it up, might as well make it a rollercoaster and make it fun. Or do you mean the Brentford section.
There was a delightful LHR to LGW helicopter transfer link I regret never having used. The much slower 727,747 green line coaches took over. Now there's a video in itself. London and Country bus services with later faster Green line coaches for longer distances to from London.
I can see why that monorail in the "downtown" picture wouldn't work, the wheels would have slammed into the support crossbeams. That car was about one second from going airborne.
Heathrow Airport doesn’t need a Monorail. What it needs is a new railway line from London Waterloo to Heathrow Terminal 5 known as the Heathrow Airport Southern Rail Link and to use the former Eurostar platforms at Waterloo. As there has been plans for a new direct airport rail link that would be lot quicker than using Heathrow Express from London Paddington and the Elizabeth Line.
The only monorails that were built in the uk were ones at theme parks, zoos or butlins I think. Chessington still had its monorail until 7 or 8 years ago. I don’t know if there are any left now
Hello Jago, there is a monorail that opened in 1901 and is still operating today. It had significant renovations to the overhead rail structure and new 2015 generation rolling stock that replaced the 1972 generation stock*. It is a true monorail with only one rail unlike the Japanese system and is a true tilting train. The track is 13.3km in length. It operates in the city of Wuppertal, Germany, and links Vohvinkel, Elbersefeld and Oberbarman**. Notes: * I travelled on the 1972 trains in 2011. ** very good model shop from which I ordered the HO Generation 15 train (static) models and quite a few sections of the overhead structure around 2015. Yes, I have a real one track - one rail mind 🚟🚟 die Schwebebahn 🇩🇪
I have been a mono rail in Kuala Lumpur and I will say one thing it turns very sharp corners so may they have a use where an elevated railway just wouldn't fit. It was incredible slow though. I think Bangkok has a couple but never been in them.
