Monorail History

Monorail History

The term monorail or industrial monorail is used to describe any number of transport systems in which a chair or carrier is suspended from, or rides on, an overhead rail structure. Unlike the well-known duo-rail system, there are many rail-guided transport options which have been described as monorails, so that tracing the history presents a demarcation problem regarding what should be included and what should be omitted.

Common usage appears to define a monorail as any rail guided vehicle which does not employ the coning action of conventional adhesion railways to achieve directional stability. This would exclude rack railways and funicular railways. This appears a reasonable start, as it is the elegant simplicity of the duorail which has to date defeated all challengers. There may exist niche applications where some of the alternative schemes show promise, but unless they can achieve better performance on existing legacy routes, or can offer a better alternative for new construction, it is difficult to see how any are likely to see widespread application.

Bearing in mind the pattern of development of conventional railways, different criteria and measures of effectiveness were relevant at different times, and alternative design solutions were proposed. Hence, a monorail of the early 19th Century bears little resemblance to current designs, and were optimised for different performance objectives, within different technological constraints.