Thursday, March 22, 2012

Monorails at Seattle Part 2

Some more technical pictures of the Seattle Monorails. First up one of the cars in the station. Not as pretty as the Disneyland Monorails, but still a nice look.

A view of the truck and drive system for the Monorail. This is an image with the skirt removed and shows the way the bogie is attached and runs against the rail.

Final image is of the driver's seat and controls.

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4 comments:

Katella Gate said...

These are really interesting, especially with the ALWEG connection.

Do you have a route map? What areas of town it connected or what clientele it was supposed to serve?

I gather it wasn't a success or we'd be seeing more monorails.

7:35 AM
Major Pepperidge said...

Very cool! Love the detail of the controls.

I think that the Seattle monorail was a success; a reader once told me that even today it was a popular mode of travel. Not sure why other cities didn't follow their lead though...

8:20 AM
Tim said...

@Katella Gate: The Seattle Monorail continues to run today, celebrating it's 50th anniversary this Saturday. The 1 mile route is the same, going nonstop from Seattle Center to downtown. The downtown station is different now, but the northern station remains the same.

Given the limited distance traveled and relative expense the monorail is mostly used by tourists. The downtown station is only a few blocks from Seattle's famous Pike Place Market. There were plans in the late 1990's and early 2000's to expand the monorail into other neighborhoods of Seattle, but this collapsed for several reasons. Today Seattle is expanding its light rail and streetcar network.

More info here:
http://www.seattlemonorail.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Center_Monorail
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Monorail_Project

11:55 AM
Matterhorn1959 said...

Thanks Tim.

9:50 AM

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