Talk:History of monorail

Listowel and Ballybunion Railway
I'm surprised there is no mention of the monorail in Kerry, Ireland - widely regarded to be the first monorail in the world and still in operation as a tourist attraction...


 * Please feel free to expand this article, whoever you are. Gordon Vigurs 11:05, 21 October 2006 (UTC)


 * References Added. Tina Cordon (talk) 15:48, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Description of a Railway on a New Principle
Henry Palmer's "Description of a Railway on a New Principle" is available as a free download from Google Books. Tina Cordon (talk) 15:28, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Pelham Park and City Island Railroad
I'm confused over trying to source the content, "From 1910–1914 a monorail system designed by Howard H Tunis was used on the Pelham Park and City Island Railroad in the Bronx, New York City. A disastrous derailment on June 16 1910 led to the line going out of business."

One source corroborates the info, "On 17 July 1910, the car left the single rail and subsided on its beam, "ears" pointed up to the sky. It was crowded with 100 passengers, some of whom were injured, and the legal battles which followed were so costly that the line could never be repaired. The car was broken up where it had crashed." The NYTimes reports on the accident. Yet another source, states it "plied the route from 1910 to 1914".

So far I can't find another source to determine the contradiction. Can anyone shed some light here? Ward20 (talk) 20:54, 14 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Have you looked at the references listed in Pelham Park and City Island Railway? -- RoySmith (talk) 21:35, 14 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes I went through them first, some of the refs above are from that article. Ward20 (talk) 23:04, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Unusual Monorails
Do you know anything about the following monorails? --NearEMPTiness (talk) 18:36, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

External links modified (February 2018)
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Couple of comments
1. It's true that a Lartigue-like monorail was built from Trona to a short-lived magnesia extraction exercise in what is now the Death Valley National Park. There's an article about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epsom_Salts_Monorail. But it was an independent invention. As far as is known, the builder (who was also the owner of the quarry) had no knowledge of the Lartigue system.

2. One other sort-of monorail that deserves mention is the Ewing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ewing_System. This was used on a 55km line in India, and a locomotive and carriage are preserved at the Indian National Rail Museum in Delhi. It is a monorail in the sense that there is only one rail, though there is also a large balancing wheel which ran on the roadway. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 116.212.178.203 (talk) 14:45, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

Wuppertal Suspended Railway
The current text reads " The suspended monorail, like the Palmer monorail appears a potentially superior solution over rough and mountainous terrain, but since the majority of the track is over more favourable territory, it only rarely offers an overall better solution." I find that the whole of the suspended monorail is over urban territory, and the reason that a one-off system has economically survived 120 years of history is that urban territory is always tough terrain unless a transit system can be built above street level with no condemnation of valuable urban buildings in the name of transit. Prices on the Wuppertal railway are relatively cheap and the experience is gorgeous compared to, say, the "A" train through Manhattan. Paul Klinkman (talk) 16:42, 25 August 2022 (UTC)