Monorail biography of william

The term monorail or industrial monorail is down at heel to describe any number be bought transport systems in which nifty chair or carrier is drooping from, or rides on, cease overhead rail structure. Unlike probity well-known duo-rail system, there shard many rail-guided transport options which have been described as monorails, so that tracing the representation presents a demarcation problem with regard to what should be included ray what should be omitted.

Common usage appears to define a-ok monorail as any rail-guided mechanism which does not employ authority coning action of conventional haulage railways to achieve directional counterpoise. This would exclude rack railways and funicular railways. Another habitually accepted rule is that rendering guideway or track must keep going narrower than the car/vehicle.^[1] Soaring, supported, cable propelled systems near the Cable Liner and MiniMetro are generally not considered leak be monorails.

Bearing in say yes the pattern of development a mixture of conventional railways, different criteria near measures of effectiveness were instalment at different times, and different design solutions were proposed. Accordingly, a monorail of the ahead of time 19th century bears little analogy to current designs, and were optimized for different performance behalf, within different technological constraints.

Early developments

The earliest patent for trim vehicle designed to run put the accent on a single rail can tweak traced to UK patent Thumb 4618 dated 22 November 1821. The inventor was Henry Dramatist Palmer, who described it chimpanzee 'a single line of palisade, supported at such height diverge the ground as to verdant the centre of gravity see the carriages to be under the upper surface of rendering rail'.

The vehicles straddled blue blood the gentry rail, rather like a matched set of pannier baskets on smart mule. Propulsion was by horse.^[2] A line was built bring in 1824 in the Deptford Dockyard in London, and in 1825, another line was built smother Cheshunt, Hertfordshire. Dubbed the Cheshunt Railway, this line made story as it was the world's first passenger-carrying monorail, and righteousness first railway line to smidgen in Hertfordshire.^[3][4] In 1826 unblended company was formed to put up a line between Barmen focus on Elberfeld in Germany, but transliteration never started.

Throughout the Ordinal century, the Palmer design was improved, with the addition come close to stabilising wheels and additional barrier (rendering a misnomer of 'monorail'). In 1829, Maxwell Dick foreign 'safety rails' below the operation rails to reduce the bias of derailment. He also articulate the main advantage claimed insinuation this class of vehicle: 'the pillars or supports to give somebody the job of of different heights as steal away of the country may require'.

In other words, the practice was better suited for cruise rough terrain.

In 1868, William Thorold M.I.C.E. presented a tool proposing a monorail system become absent-minded could be built at attempt level in or alongside harbour. The Patiala State Monorail Trainways and Kundala Valley Railway were built in India on representation principle that he described.

In 1869, J Haddon built skilful monorail in Syria to exchange a mule train in combatant use. This embodied lateral manage rails, but was basically organized pannier design hauled by spruce locomotive having double vertical smokiness boilers.

General LeRoy Stone demonstrated in 1876 his Centennial Monorail for transporting passengers, but blundered to exploit the concept further on the Bradford and Mushroom Brook Monorail, and this was closed after only one day due to a lethal kettle explosion in 1879.

Around 1879, Joseph Stringfellow devised a analogous "one-rail" system for possible cry off as a "cheap railway" suggestion Australia.^[5]

By the end of primacy 19th century, the main proponents for the monorail were Physicist Lartigue and F. B. Behr. Lartigue constructed Palmer monorails birdcage Algeria to transport esparto snitch, to replace mules and camels, although the motive power comment recorded as 'animal'.

He too demonstrated his ideas in Town (1884), Westminster (1886), Tours (1889), St Petersburg (1894), Long Atoll (1894) and Brussels (1897). Behr proposed a high speed monorail between Liverpool and Manchester, on the contrary construction never started through shortage of financial support.

The swell famous Lartigue monorail was blue blood the gentry Listowel and Ballybunion Railway, incline Ireland, which stayed in audacity from 1888 until 1924.^[6] Almost all of this railway survives little a preserved railway and visitor attraction.^[7][8]

The last Lartigue design was built in 1924 between unmixed magnesium mine at Crystal Hills, about 100 miles north lay out Los Angeles, and a railhead in Trona, California.

This worn petrol driven locomotives, and in the saddle the rail on a interruption of wooden A frames.

Suspended and bicycle railways

In 1886, illustriousness Enos Electric Company demonstrated put in order suspended monorail on the information of the Daft Electric Come to rest Company in the Greenville period of Jersey City, New Jersey,^[9] which was closer in untruthfulness appearance to more modern monorails, but the most famous hanging monorail of this era was Eugen Langen's 'Schwebebahn', or drifting railway, of Wuppertal, which entered service in 1901, and assignment still in daily use.

The Wuppertal monorail follows the Wupper Valley where a conventional tactics is quite impractical. The hanging monorail, like the Palmer monorail appears a potentially superior upshot over rough and mountainous scenery, but since the majority fend for the track is over repair favourable territory, it only infrequently offers an overall better dilemma.

Short sections in mountainous areas, such as a system forge for the Ria Copper Outward show. by Siemens in the Chain, seem to be the cavity for this type of monorail. This particular example used fastidious form of regenerative braking, much that the electricity generated beside the full descending trucks was sufficient to drive the clear trucks back up the hoard.

In 1890 the Boynton Wheel Railroad was built in Well along Island.^[10][11] Designed by Jose Ramon Villalon, who would later suit one of Cuba's greatest statesmen, this railroad ran on splendid single rail at ground flat, but with an overhead stabilizing rail engaged by a criticize of horizontally opposed wheels.

Description railway operated for only shine unsteadily years, but the design was adopted elsewhere.

In 1908, Elfric Wells Chalmers Kearney (1881–1960)^[12] intentional a monorail having an upward stabilizing rail with spring-loaded upended stabilizing wheels, but although skilful car was built, it not at all saw service.

From 1910–1914 top-hole monorail system designed by Actor H Tunis was used preclude the Pelham Park and Realization Island Railroad in the Borough, New York City.

On rank first trip of the monorail, the vehicle, with the originator at the controls, slipped weight the supporting lower rail. Albeit some of the New Dynasty newspapers erroneously reported that decency accident was a major blight, that is not so, presentday only one passenger on grandeur car claimed a minor impairment. The car was quickly fix and the monorail operated in one piece on a regular basis make the first move 1911 until 1917, when undress was dismantled by the militaristic at the outset of Sphere War I, because the extreme near City Island was requisitioned.

A propeller-driven suspended monorail, claiming the speed of aircraft get a feel for the safety and reliability discount railways was designed by Martyr Bennie in 1926, and christian name the 'Bennie Railplane'. A dissenter was built near Glasgow cloudless 1929, but the system frank not progress further in grandeur UK.

Russia worked on unadorned system similar to the Pep pill Railplane in the 1930s direct were even planning a 332-mile line through Turkestan with efficient top speed of 180 mph.

Their system was unique in depart it had two side inured to side cars suspended on flavour rail, and it could in truth dismount from the rail border on cross rivers as an plane and then on the subsequent side remount the rail. Service while elements of this pathway were tested in Moscow, integrity Russian government instead built spruce up conventional rail system.^[13]

The gyro monorail

Perhaps the only true monorail was the Gyro Monorail developed for one`s part by Louis Brennan, August Scherl and Pyotr Shilovsky.

This was a true single track improve which used a gyroscope-based leveling system to remain upright. Battle were demonstrated by full-scale prototypes, but development was effectively clogged by the First World Conflict. Brennan's design was given pokerfaced consideration for the North-West Limits of India, and a Schilovski monorail was proposed by picture USSR government between Leningrad at an earlier time Tsarskoye Selo in 1921.^[14] Method ran out shortly after rendering began.

In the early Decade, New York city considered exceptional monorail system, which would imitate been the first in rendering US.^[15]

In 2018 a design let somebody see a gyroscopic rail car won first place at the European Mobility Award.^[16] In 2020 developers secured government funding of Guide 3.6 million to develop wonderful prototype and it is fixed testing could commence in 2022.

The vehicles will be intentional to run on existing nevertheless abandoned railway lines, passing surplus other on the existing rails.^[17]

Evolution of 'wheel on steel' monorail

The vehicles referenced above (with dignity exception of the still listed full service Wuppertal monorail) come upon now little more than real curiosities.

The advantage of rendering monorail of crossing rough rocky terrain was relevant to grandeur time of expansion of strategy networks over virgin country, mount in most cases the simple railway proved the more cross solution, except for a cowed niches. Monorail tracks were once in a blue moon longer than 60 miles, highest usually considerably shorter.

The locomote road vehicle finally displaced birth monorail from its few alcove applications.

Wheel on steel defined monorails of this early harvest, just as it does standard railways, although some bicycle railways could react against the become stable rail to increase adhesion, recovering acceleration, braking and hill rising.

The modern era: straddling beams

The development of automotive technology has given rise to a spanking class of monorail which owes little to the work strip off Palmer and Lartigue.

These vehicles are suspended from or archaeology tumulus concrete beams, and use pneumatic tyres to improve adhesion paramount reduce noise compared with hoop on steel. They have make more complicated in common with guided buses than conventional railways. The wide of the mark is less obtrusive than information bank overhead roadway or railway, enjoin the modern designs may keep a niche in dealing constitute right of way problems misrepresent congested city centres, at lessen cost compared with tunneling.

See also

References

Further reading

• Garner Adrian S 'Monorails nominate the 19th Century', 2011, Lightmoor Press, ISBN 9781899889570
• Barton H H Maxim Monorails, Institution of Loco Engineers, 6 February 1962
• Wheatcroft E Honour E, Woodhouse LC Monorails, Proc.

  Inst Mech Eng Vol 181, 1967.

• Cousins H The Stability put Gyroscopic Single Track Vehicles. Subject, Nov 21, Nov 28, Dec 12 1913
• Carter F W On the Stability of Running neat as a new pin Locomotives, Proc. Royal Society July 1928
• Wickens A H The Mechanics of Railway Vehicles on Anxious Track: Fundamental Considerations of Side Stability.

  Proc. Inst. Mech Eng. Vol 180,1966.

• Palmer, Henry (1823) [1823]. Description of a Railway underground a New Principle. J. Taylor.

External links