Steam Monorail

[Charles Hunter]

Found this somewhere else:
http://dave-mills.yolasite.com/steam-monorail.php

Cool stuff.  Hey Ock - can we have one of these?

[Ocklawaha]

Found this somewhere else:
http://dave-mills.yolasite.com/steam-monorail.php

Cool stuff.  Hey Ock - can we have one of these?

Would make for a hell of a 1.5" scale riding model around a museum if only there was a way across it!





http://www.lartiguemonorail.com/Page%203.htm

Kind of reminds me of the Sonoma Valley Prismoidal Railway, which seemed to be the inexpensive answer to all things rail, to the folks in Sonoma California around 1877. Sonoma Valley Prismoidal Railway was a early wooden monorail built from Petaluma River landing 5 miles (8.0 km) to Schellville in 1877 and converted to the narrow-gauge Sonoma Valley Railroad a year later.  The prism consumed some 68,000 board feet of lumber per mile but it worked! A steam locomotive from Pacific Car and Foundry, and a couple of strange flat cars all of which had angled rollers aimed at the prism. Several miles were built across from San Francisco at Norfolk, where a small wharf and barns were located. The first run did exactly as predicted and everyone enjoyed a 3 mile journey out and back over the marsh. When it came time to push the line on into Sonoma, it struck the inventors like a lightning bolt... "THERE WAS NO PRACTICAL WAY TO CREATE A RAILROAD CROSSING!" So the Prismoidal died along with a sister project built somewhere around Chicago. Like most monorails, they too joined the junk heap of transportation innovation IE: Reinventing the wheel.



OCKLAWAHA

[LPBrennan]

This double-boilered form of "monorail" was invented by a Frenchman named Lartigue. As the Magliozzi brothers (aka the Tappet brothers, Click and Clack) say: French engineers copy no one else, and no one else copies French engineers! An actual railway existed of this type, the wonderfully-named Listowel & Ballybunion in West Kerry, Ireland. It opened in 1888, connecting at Listowel with the Limerick and Tralee line and running nine and a half miles to Ballybunion, on the coast. Everything had to be doubled, as the equipment rode atop the A-frame track structure, sort of like saddlebags on a horse. There are stories of the arrangements needed to ship awkward loads, like the farmer who shipped a cow. He also sent two calves to balance it, the calves returning on the next train back. Each train included a stile car, allowing people to climb over the track.

Meant as a demonstration line, it ran until 1924, though apparently it didn't pay. Lartigue claimed this method would minimize cost of construction but be suitable in places that needed communication but speed was not important. Doesn't seem there were lightning expresses on the old L&T line! Imagine the tourist attraction it would be today. In actual working, the top speed was 15 to 20 mph. The riding quality had a pitching motion which made strangers to the line "somewhat uneasy" though I imagine regulars were used to it. Most of the information was gleaned from O. S. Nock's "Railways at the Turn of the Century, 1895-1905."

There were many other monorail schemes in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries, including a steam-powered proposal for an elevated line in Boston, which was built as a demonstration line at Coney Island, I think; and an electric one which was actually built that had a single rail on the ground and two rails overhead. It worked until it derailed and pulled down part of the overhead structure. It had the advantage (?) of being the only monorail I've ever seen that would allow for level grade crossings- always a shortcoming in any other monorail.

Monorails, of course, are not mono- at all. They are unbelievably complicated three-rail systems, unless someone has discovered a practical way to balance a train on one rail. They are amusement park rides, ill-suited for serious transit use. Monorails are bad Nineteenth Century engineering and practical for high-speed mass transit only in Flash Gordon movie serials of the 1930s.

[Overstreet]

The BIG Eye train?

In 1924 that light may have been considered bright. But what if it were a modern lamp. 

[LPBrennan]

The illustration of the L&B locomotive in Nock's book does not show a headlight, which is consistent with practice throughout the British Isles and much of the Continent in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries. British railways were fenced and level crossings were gated, so there was felt to be no need to light the track at night, unlike American operation. I wonder if the original L&B even operated at night. It could be that the reconstructed line added the headlight to make the engine seem even more old-fashioned, even as American locomotives have fake balloon stacks and large, boxy headlights added for the same reason.

British trains had headlamps mounted on the pilot beam which indicated to towermen the train's route or destination, allowing them to determine which switches should be set at junctions and interlockings. They also displayed metal markers in daytime for the same reason. In historic photos you can see them- small lamps and oddly shaped metal plates with lines or shapes painted on them.

The large box headlights seen on American locomotives in the Nineteenth Century contained a large polished reflector to enhance the light of the kerosene lamp inside and project the light forward. When electric headlights arrived in the 1890s, they were often retrofitted into these boxes, but soon smaller headlights replaced them, as the brighter lights did not need suck large reflectors. As the lights improved, the cases holding the light and reflector became smaller and smaller. As I said, the boxy lights are often added to modern locomotives to make them look older, as is the use of brightly-colored paint and decorations. It's not true all American steam engines were black, but they rarely sported the bright colors common in the rest of the world after the 1890s. With few exceptions, color returned to American steam after the introduction of stream-lining in the 1930s. (Probably the strangest example was a shrouded Santa Fe 4-6-4 which was painted a light powder blue with darker blue accents!)