In between working on my Alaska short-line project, I've somehow found time to buy a monorail from the local zoo. Figured I'd share it here as it's sort of railroad related! Some of you may have seen this on the Abandoned RR Facebook page.



The zoo retired their monorail in 2013 and didn't know what to do with it. They were going to sell it for scrap so they could use the car barn for other purposes.



I bought a whole 6-car train and hauled it out to a rural site to use as a weekend cabin.





I even have a (very small) monorail museum in the driver's cab.





More pics on https://saveitforparts.wordpress.com/category/monorail/

Very cool, thank you for sharing. Does it still have its mechanical system, or is it just a shell?

Rob

That's pretty unique. Awesome little getaway and preservation you have there.

Did the zoo purchase a new memorial train have they retired the system completely?

I believe this was a standard model sold to a lot of museums. I believe there was one in Minnesota, and another at the Kings Island Safari, that is now at Jungle Jims store in Cincinnati.

/me runs away fast


/me runs back


very cool

/me runs back again

Thanks for including "Bitey", I haven't laughed that hard in a while.

(If you don't recognize him, you need to watch more older Simpsons episodes).

Nick

Miami's Metrozoo operates a similar monorail. And Gold Coast Railroad Museum is right across the parking lot !

Well, sir, there's nothing on earth Like a genuine, Bona fide, Electrified, Six-car Monorail!

To answer some of the questions, yes we make tons of Simpsons jokes. We've even had a screening of that particular episode in the monorail!

The wheels and motors are gone, they prevented it from being loaded onto a trailer, and added significant weight. The cars still have their steel frame, electrical system, and pivots where the bogies could be mounted. Each set of two cars had a wheel bogie between, some were powered and some were unpowered. In operation, the bogies wrapped around the box beam and held the monorail on it's track. For maintenance it could be rolled off the beam onto small side rails on auxillary casters (more like a real railroad!). Currently it is resting on the maintenance casters notched into railroad ties.

Bogies without main running wheels: https://saveitforparts.files.wordpress. ... /06/w2.jpg

Video of the transition from box beam to maintenance track, including a view underneath: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvvFj-6dWe4

And a video of unloading one of the cars from a trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQVPtO6pCwg

The Miami monorail is almost identical to this one, in fact the original owners (New Orleans World Fair) toured the MN Zoo monorail and liked it so much they ordered the same one. There are a few others in this family tree with slightly different cab / shell designs. Later evolutions of this design showed up in downtown Sydney and at various airports.

The MN Zoo purchased their monorail system in 1979 and ran it until 2013. Failure to turn a profit was given as the reason for its retirement, although details are mixed. The zoo still has the track (originally they wanted me to take that as well, until they remembered they have some utilities running through it), but all they have left for rolling stock is a self-propelled maintenance car / switcher.

This post on my website has more on the history and technical details: https://saveitforparts.wordpress.com/20 ... -monorail/

And this post shows more of the moving process: https://saveitforparts.wordpress.com/20 ... l-part-ii/