A daily updated blog typed by someone with painty hands, oil under his fingernails and the smell of solder in his nostrils who likes making all sort of models and miniatures. And fixing things.
Saturday, May 24, 2025
Saturday Fim Club: A double-sided monorail
What a shame this never came into fruition - a great ride, and potentially, an interesting model too.
3 comments:
Huw Griffiths
said...
Clever engineering - and a good choice of location for the prototype.
Somehow, I suspect that this concept might have fallen prey to the same inherent inflexibility that seems to have stopped a number of monorail and "pod" based systems.
They're probably great at places like airports and theme parks, where they know that small groups of people are likely to appear very frequently, all wanting to get to one of several clearly defined destinations.
Perhaps not so good for towns that could use a proper tram system, but can't afford one.
It's interesting that one of Benjamin Britten's "Sea Pictures" was used as background music at the start and end of the video.
OK - I've never been a fan of that piece of music - but it's likely to be familiar to a number of people. For a while, a "tweaked" version was used by the BBC, as a sig tune for "Tomorrow's World".
(Slightly ironic, that - in view of Britten having been dead for a number of years when they started using his music. You couldn't make this stuff up.)
There's a line in the Thunderbirds' "Trapped in the Sky" episode that goes, "Ladies and gentlemen. We have now completed out take-off procedure and are flying at a height of 250,000 feet. You may unfasted your safety belts and smoke if you wish."
The woman pushing her 'antique' perambulator onto the futuristic cabinentaxi reminded me of it. The future we anticipate never arrives but something completely mundane, like prams or smoking on a plane, becomes almost comically old-fashioned.
Years ago I used the Sydney monorail before it closed. Fun but they aren't commercially viable. Road and rail always wins due to the ability to adapt to either passenger or goods transport. I think we all love monorails as they were often shown in childhood futuristic sci-fi books and comics.
3 comments:
Clever engineering - and a good choice of location for the prototype.
Somehow, I suspect that this concept might have fallen prey to the same inherent inflexibility that seems to have stopped a number of monorail and "pod" based systems.
They're probably great at places like airports and theme parks, where they know that small groups of people are likely to appear very frequently, all wanting to get to one of several clearly defined destinations.
Perhaps not so good for towns that could use a proper tram system, but can't afford one.
It's interesting that one of Benjamin Britten's "Sea Pictures" was used as background music at the start and end of the video.
OK - I've never been a fan of that piece of music - but it's likely to be familiar to a number of people. For a while, a "tweaked" version was used by the BBC, as a sig tune for "Tomorrow's World".
(Slightly ironic, that - in view of Britten having been dead for a number of years when they started using his music. You couldn't make this stuff up.)
There's a line in the Thunderbirds' "Trapped in the Sky" episode that goes, "Ladies and gentlemen. We have now completed out take-off procedure and are flying at a height of 250,000 feet. You may unfasted your safety belts and smoke if you wish."
The woman pushing her 'antique' perambulator onto the futuristic cabinentaxi reminded me of it. The future we anticipate never arrives but something completely mundane, like prams or smoking on a plane, becomes almost comically old-fashioned.
Years ago I used the Sydney monorail before it closed. Fun but they aren't commercially viable. Road and rail always wins due to the ability to adapt to either passenger or goods transport. I think we all love monorails as they were often shown in childhood futuristic sci-fi books and comics.
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