The monorail.
Short of an actual rocket ship or flying car, there is possibly no better transportation
system to represent “The Future”.
Yet as a means of transport, it’s origins date back as far as the early 19th century.
Like most vehicles it went through decades of experimentation and evolution and looks
very different today than it did when it was first invented.
Interestingly enough, it would take anywhere from 90 to 130 years before it would make
its way to the United States.
Now if it sounds odd that there’s a 40 year range there, that’s because it is.
Today, we’re going to talk about America’s first monorail, because as easy of a task
as that sounds, I’m still not sure if I know what it was.
Now some might point to the Disneyland monorail as the country’s first monorail, because
it’s a fact that Disney themselves like to tout.
“Provocative new ideas like the first monorail system in the western hemisphere.”
“When I was asked to design the first monorail in America I was tickled-”
“It was the first daily operating monorail system in the western hemisphere-”
“The monorail was the first operating monorail in North America-”
But see, they do it in a careful Basbeall-esque way.
You know, when you add qualifiers to make the statistic more unique, like hitter with
the most doubles who is also a lefty and who’s name begins with a vowel.
Disney is careful to claim that the Disneyland monorail is the first daily-operating monorail
in the Western hemisphere.
And it was… depending on how you define daily-operating… and depending on how you
define monorail.
You’d think “monorail” would be a simple word.
Mono. Rail. One. Rail.
Does it have one rail?
It’s a monorail!
More than one rail?
Not a monorail.
On the list of unclear terms, this should be towards the bottom.
Except the weird reality is that a good number of the early monorail designs were not actually monorails.
I came across a number of questionable American monorails that pre-date the Disneyland monorail,
so let’s run through some of them.
One of the first American monorails was the Centennial Monorail, which was introduced
to the public in 1876 at the Philadelphia Centennial World’s Fair.
It was based on the Lartigue monorail design from Europe, which is to say it was a monorail
with three rails.
The car sat on top of one rail, and then two more towards the bottom acted as guides so
that the car would stay steady.
It was a smart design, but it was one that makes it hard to seriously call it a monorail.
I don’t think folks back then even bought it, because when the design was used two years
later in Pennsylvania to bring supplies in and out of the town of Bradford, it was named
the Bradford and Foster Brook Railway.
Those two extra rails must have weighed heavy on their conscience, as it should have.
In 1910 the Interborough Rapid Transit Company debuted a monorail that would run every day
between City Island and Bartow Ave in the Bronx in New York City.
This one actually sat atop of one single rail, which I guess was progress.
Except it also had two guide rails, and this time they were situated above the car along
an elevated track.
So add one to the list of monorails undeserving of the name.
Oh and it didn’t work either.
On day one the IRT monorail derailed, injuring a handful of riders and forcing it to close
for four months.
The line would only last a few years, with the residents of City Island hating the hazardous
monorail so much that they submitted a formal petition to prevent the expansion of the service.
Eventually the line was converted to a trolley.
One year later, we move over to the west coast where a William H Boyes of the Pacific Railway
Company built a test line for a monorail in Seattle, Washington.
This one is strange.
From the photo in the Library of Congress it employs the straddle design that would
become what most people think of when they think of a monorail.
This shouldn’t be a major development, but it’s finally a monorail on one rail.
However, and here comes the strange part, I couldn’t for the life me find any actual
evidence that the monorail ever ran.
The most I was able to find was evidence that Boyes held lectures about his monorail design.
In that, it mentions that he built a stretch of track and one of the cars, but again, nothing
that actually indicates that it was a functional test model.
No information on how long it ran, at what speeds, with what motor.
Nothing.
I did find mention of him later that year, as his company’s shareholders had to get
a mandate forcing him to turn over the company books for inspection after he decided to pay
himself some of the money the company raised.
That’s not specifically monorail related, but it definitely starts to paint a picture
that adds to the question of whether or not his monorail was real.
The company would go on to build no other monorails beyond that one length of test track.
One year after that, in 1912, we’ve got the U.S. Senate Monorail in Washington DC.
This is another one that’s difficult to call a real monorail.
It utilized a single track overhead, similar to the Wuppertal Schwebebahn in Germany.
However while the Schwebebahn hangs suspended from it’s mono-rail, the Senate Monorail
used a guide rail grooved into the floor to keep steady.
So another multi-railed monorail.
In 1956 it would be Houston, Texas that would get the next major monorail.
Headed by engineer Murel Goodell, a company creatively named Monorail Inc. set out to
build a test track for their suspended monorail design, once again emulating the Schwebebahn.
They selected Arrowhead Park, an old race track just 10 miles south of Houston for their
testing spot.
The owner of the track ended up letting them use the land for free in support of the idea
of a monorail as a means of transportation in cities.
Monorail Inc.’s idea was to develop a test track to show the public that a monorail could work.
Then they’d sell the idea to various cities across the country.
They estimated that they could build out systems for cities at a cost of $500,000 a mile, and
then lease-sell the monorails they build to the city.
So they went ahead and built a 970 foot long track that stood 55 feet tall.
The track itself was a 30 inch diameter pipe.
At one point the company played around with the idea of building the pipe so that it could
transport resources like water or oil as a way to increase the profitability of the system.
Because if there’s a monorail accident, the best thing to have is definitely a track
full of oil.
Luckily it was only ever an idea.
After just a few months the track was completed, and in February of 1956 the monorail, dubbed
the Trailblazer, was opened to the public.
Pulling a page directly out of the setup of a superhero comic, Monorail Inc invited 50
orphans to be the first to ride.
That ride got off to a rocky start when the test vehicle full of orphans lost control
and began careening down the track.
Just kidding.
It did get off to a rocky start, but that rocky start was just a two hour delay and
some issues traversing the 7% grade on the track.
They were eventually ironed out and the monorail ran smoothly for the rest of the day.
The orphans were safe.
The Trailblazer was a monorail that was actually a monorail.
It opened to the public and ran regularly, gaining a ridership of 68,000 passengers that
first five months.
In August Monorail Inc announced that they’d be disassembling the track and moving it over
to the Texas State Fair, where it would become the first commercial monorail… that was
actually a monorail.
For 25 cents, over 100,000 fair guests would ride along the 4,000 foot track and experience
the transportation of the future.
Monorail Inc began to talk with various cities, just as they had hoped, and got estimate requests
from Dallas, Seattle, Cincinnati, Detroit, Chicago, and New York.
They also caught the attention of a European businessman by the name of Axel Lennart Wenner-Gren,
who was developing monorails in Germany.
His company, using his name for the acronym, was ALWEG.
ALWEG purchased controlling stake in Monorail Inc in 1957, but they had made the decision
a little prematurely.
For as nice as it was to have interest from six major cities, none actually developed
into any concrete plans.
The reasons ranged from cities not having the budget, to not having the votes, to deciding
that for as cool as a monorail seemed, it wasn’t actually the best transportation
system for them.
It would be a trend that would plague monorails for quite some time, building an image for
the public that they were better off as amusements, for fairs or for small closed loops.
Meanwhile over in Europe, ALWEG was improving on their straddle-design monorail and previewing
it to the public just in the same way Monorail Inc did in Houston.
Except ALWEG wasn’t impressing a bunch of orphans.
They were impressing Walt Disney.
Walt wanted the futuristic looking vehicles for Disneyland and so Disney worked with ALWEG
to build a custom monorail based on their design.
The Disneyland-ALWEG Monorail System was dedicated on June 14th, 1959, just three years after
the Trailblazer had transported nearly 200,000 people in Texas.
So which monorail was the first daily-operating monorail in the western hemisphere?
Perhaps if, like many people at the time, you were OK with calling these three-railed
systems a monorail then it would be the Interborough Rapid Transit monorail which operated daily
in New York City.
Or maybe it was Monorail Incs Trailblazer, which was suspended from one rail and operated
every day during the State Fair.
Or, if the limited engagement nature of state fairs disqualifies it as “operating daily”
even though it “operated daily” during the fair, then perhaps it was the Disneyland-ALWEG
Monorail System.
It ultimately depends on how you define monorail, and how you define daily-operating.
The one thing I know for sure is that it definitely wasn’t this one.
I’m like 90% sure this thing never moved.
During my research for this video, I found multiple instances of multiple monorails being
hailed as the first monorail in America.
Even in historic look-backs, there doesn’t seem to be a consensus.
It was a testament to how wildly different a lot of these designs were.
But ultimately it didn’t matter.
While the Disneyland monorail was perhaps not the first, it was unquestionably the most
impactful when it came to the public's perception of the monorail.
Even today when most people think of a monorail, they think of either the Disneyland or Walt
Disney World system.
Just goes to show that sometimes with history, it’s not about being first.