Did East Cambridge have the world's first monorail?

czsz

czsz

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The system herewith illustrated is the invention of Mr. Joe V. Meigs, of Lowell, Mass., and has been tested under conditions far more exacting than would be found in actual practice. The road is not a model, but a full-sized elevated railroad in every respect. This was made necessary .by a section in the act of the Massachusetts Legislature authorizing the incorporation of the Meigs Elevated Railway Company, which states that "no location for tracks shall be petitioned for in the city of Boston until at least one mile of the road has been built and operated, nor until the safety and strength of the structure and the rolling stock and motive power shall have been examined and approved by the board of railroad commissioners or by a competent engineer to be appointed by them." To fully demonstrate the possibilities of the road under widely varying circumstances, the company has built tracks of several kinds—wooden way of the cheapest possible kind; wooden way following the contour of the earth; wooden way with level grade secured by varying the heights of the posts; wooden way with very short curves and steep grades; and iron way upon high grades, increasing in height until a level of 14 feet in the clear above the earth was secured. The trial road, beginning at the shops of the company on Bridge St., East Cambridge, has one curve of 50 feet radius, 165 feet long, on a grade of 120 feet, and on level and curves has grades of 240 feet, 300 feet, and 345 feet. So far everything has worked in the most satisfactory manner, the train rounding the exceedingly sharp curves easily, and mounting the steep grades without trouble.
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Much more here:

http://www.catskillarchive.com/rrextra/odmeig.Html
 
I thought this was built, but only as a very short demonstration line, which was too short to serve any useful transit purpose.
 
Ron Newman said:
I thought this was built, but only as a very short demonstration line, which was too short to serve any useful transit purpose.
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I'm sure they had to remove it after neighbors complained of the shadows it cast.
 
There was a time when THIS is what the Red Line almost ended up looking like!
 
The Red Line was originally going to be an elevated but.. duh duh duhHhh!!.. the people of Cambridge complained and the subway won the day.
 
Is that Superior Nut? Despite the appearance, I believe they are still fully open and operating.
 
Superior Nut is still in business, but they're the blue-ish building next door.
 
Excuse my self-admitted ignorance, but why has the monorail been a colossal failure, ridiculed by all? It seems to work quite well at Disney and would not be as intrusive as heavy or even light rail.
 
HalcyonEra said:
Excuse my self-admitted ignorance, but why has the monorail been a colossal failure, ridiculed by all? It seems to work quite well at Disney and would not be as intrusive as heavy or even light rail.
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Have you seen the switching mechanisms these things have? That's probably the single worst part.

Also, you're sort of limited to elevated operations only, I would think. At least feasibly. They'd be a huge pain in the ass for both animals (although, with rapid transit, you want to fence them out entirely, anyway) and workers at ground level. In fact, MOW work must be very cumbersome either way. For elevated, you'd definitely need cherry pickers and whatnot as opposed to walking on an elevated bed, and if you have a line on ground level, you'd have to climb over the massive single rail over and over to work around it.
 
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