Heathrow Airport's High Speed Monorails

Mono = 1, rail = rail.
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[@pacificostudios]

Speaking as a civil engineer, a trouble with monorails that people miss is that FOUNDATIONS are usually most of the cost of building any form of land transportation. Laypeople seem to think bridge piers are just hammered into the ground like a wooden telephone pole. Actually, they are built upon a secure foundation below the ground. Once one builds a bridge pier, the cost difference between a monorail and a conventional railroad is trifling, compared to all the disadvantages of a monorail compared to a railroad.

[@kcnmsepognln]

Speaking as a layperson, I don't like being patronised with unsubstantiated generalisations.

[@andywarne963]

Bangkok is a good place for comparing new monorail with new elevated heavy rail. The pillar foundations for both systems are completed in a short time using bored piling, but the completion of post-tensioned viaducts using sections dropped by linear cranes takes far longer and much more costly than craning a pre-cast monorail running beam, which is done simply with a conventional crane at each end. I watched construction of the yellow line from my apartment. Each beam between piers was placed in an hour or so having been driven to site by a massive truck.

[@wewillrockyou1986]

@@andywarne963 You can use pre-cast bridge sections for rail (or anything else) too, in fact for rail it's easier because you don't even need to make specific curved sections for where there is a curve in the track, you can just use straight sections and have them be wide enough to accomodate the track going through the curve.

[@TheHoveHeretic]

In dense urban settings your critique doesn't entirely negate certain advantages of monorails, which can fit more easily into a three dimensional cityscape. Thinking here of some Asian examples which penetrate skyscrapers and follow cliffs above rivers. Hardly conditions applicable to the UK, I realise ..... unless Cheddar Gorge needs rapid transit any time soon!

[@jimherbert007]

Foundations, points, there are loads of issues. however, I’ve sold Monorails to Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook, and it sure put them on the map

[@chrissmith8773]

Hell, that’s more of a Shelbyville idea if you ask me.

[@TheWestAnglian]

I hear those things are awfully loud

[@briangarrow448]

Monorail, monorail, monorail!

[@emjackson2289]

​@@TheWestAnglianit glides as softly as a Fairy Rotordyne flying around a cloud!

[@oldblueshirtguy]

@@TheWestAnglian It glides as softly as a cloud.

[@comicus01]

Yes, this video was only missing a reference to The Simpsons. Perhaps he should have said it was almost tried in Springfield until the citizens regained their senses.

[@john1703]

"The scheme was dead in the water, because Bennie was dead in the ground." 🤣🤣

[@livestocknetwork320]

If they were doubled, would they be stereorails?...

[@Scruffy1000]

errrrrr……. Probably ‘trains’ 😅

[@MM22966]

"I've sold monorails to Heathrow, Sussex, and North Scotland, and it put them on the map!"

[@jannearo328]

Mono...d'oh!

[@emjackson2289]

Is there a chance the track could bend?

[@hilaryc8648]

@@emjackson2289 Not on your life my Hindu friend.

[@jimherbert007]

what about us brainless slobs?

[@AtheistOrphan]

‘The future is jet-powered helicopters’ - Well in the 1980s I did fly into Heathrow in a turbine-powered helicopter: the Gatwick-Heathrow Seaking appropriately registered G-LINK.

[@lawrencelewis2592]

I rode the monorail at Disneyworld in Florida, years ago. I thought it would glide as softly as a cloud, but no. It bumped and shook like a bus on the cracked and broken Main street of Springfield.

[@francesconicoletti2547]

I rode the Sydney Monorail , when it existed, and it was one on the rattliest modes of public transport in Sydney. And that is saying something.

[@StuK323]

A rail plane? So Bennie…….made a jet?

[@lionvillelion]

Oh but they're weird and they're wonderful.

[@huwgrossmith9555]

A prop job

[@lawrencelewis2592]

It's got electric boobs, her mom has two!

[@Todaviho]

I can just imagine the sound levels... an airplane just over ground level in the middle of the city... I'm sure it's as quite as a whisper :)

[@glynwelshkarelian3489]

The monorail episodes of Thunderbirds, 1966 (Brink of Disaster and the one with Lady Penelope on a ladder in front to the train), formed my idea of monorails. They always seemed a bit daft. Massive things hold a rail in the air Vs 2 things solidly on the ground. I was not surprised when Springfield's monorail was as bad as those of Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook (as already mentioned by others).

[@kjh23gk]

Thanks for pronouncing Milngavie correctly! 😊

[@eddisstreet]

I remember being in Edinburgh on business and being laughed at for my pronunciation of Corstorphine

[@apuldram]

Almost fell off my seat when I realised Jago had got it right! Not that I…

[@markh5210]

The UK is a monorail manufacturer. The trains for the Cairo monorail are built by Alstom in Derby.

[@sea80vicvan]

Well, TBF. there are isolated cases where a monorail exists due to a specific situation where it was the best way to handle the problem: Sao Paolo has a monorail that serves an area of the city on steep terrain that requires a mode that can handle high grades, and Tokyo has their monorail connecting Haneda Airport to downtown that threads through heavy density. In nearly all other cases, I think a monorail gets proposed because it looks like what all the sci-fi literature of the 50's and earlier told us the future would be, no matter how impractical.

[@zaphod4245]

Yeah, the one thing monorails have going for them is that they're pretty much elevated by default. So if you're building a system which is mostly or entirely elevated, a monorail is probably cheaper than an elevated conventional rail line, and adding extra overpasses/bridges makes no difference. Ofc conventional rail is cheaper if it can run on the surface, but in places where that isn't possible (as in your examples), monorails can make sense.

[@lefthandedspanner]

the major practical disadvantage of monorails compared to conventional railways is that it's much harder to build junctions with only one rail; while you can build points on conventional railways, a junction on a monorail either requires the entire train to be shifted onto the other track, or the entire track to be shifted before the train gets onto it this is why the monorails that do exist are links between two destinations, rather than part of a wider public transport network - they are effectively high-speed horizontal lifts that look like trains

[@thomasfarrell5396]

Best pronunciation of Milngavie from an English man I have ever heard. Well done.

[@laurencefraser]

In practice, Monorail has some limited use cases where choosing it over regular rail is actually the correct choice. Largely because regular rail's limitations render it unsuitable. Outside of those, the only thing it really has going for it over regular rail is novelty, in exchange for a bunch of extra cost and complexity. As such, it quickly wanders into the realm of the lower end of the gadgetbahn scale when used in sitautions where standard rail would have been perfectly suitable. Noticeably, when monorail is actually the correct choice, it's generally Not the train's speed that is the important part, it's that most varieties of monorail have an easier time with steeper slopes and sharper bends than standard rail does, which is an advantage when you're building in areas with a lot of changes in elevation or where you can't knock down any inconvenient very tall buildings and have to follow a street grid somewhere which doesn't have 12 lane intersections everywhere (also the entire track is basically bridges/elevated anyway no matter what you do so once you nail down that you're building a monorail you get less constant arguing about the budget for bridges or elevated sections, or people insisting it should be in a tunnel in areas where doing so would be a dumb idea, etc.)

[@TalesOfWar]

There's a reason the only places you really see them used as in theme parks, where the whole point is to entertain and be novel.

[@mittfh]

Or you're building in a long, narrow valley where there's no room for any infrastructure except above the river... Hello Wuppertal!

[@delurkor]

I think Japan has the largest collection of monorails used for transport, but I think nearly each system is a different method. Both beam riders and suspended types are used. But there seems to be little commonality in the systems. And I just discovered China has the longest monorail system(or line) because. Side note: In the original movie "Fahrenheit 451" a monorail was used to demonstrat the modernity of the time. And just discovered it was in France, and dismantled not long after filming(Thank you IMDB).

[@Julia_and_the_City]

​@@mittfhWuppertal in particular has the issue of geology, where the soil along the riverbed was unsuitable for the technology at the time to dig tunnels... nowadays tunneling technology has vastly improved, the Wuppertal monorail likely wouldn't be built today. But in Chongquin this still rings true.

[@WillKemp]

They built a monorail in Sydney (Australia) 30-something years ago. Nobody ever used it and they eventually took it down. Now they have a tram line which doesn't exactly run the same route, but it's not far off. I'm sorry to say I never went on the monorail when it was still there

[@opiejaye]

I don't think I can ever read or hear the word 'monorail' without thinking about the song from _that_ Simpsons episode.

[@francis_n]

I came here to the comments section looking for a Simpsons reference as soon as I clicked into this video. Thank you for delivering

[@Kevinfordsynthesizers]

To heck with capacity and cost, I still believe in Bennie, but I’m a child of the Gerry Anderson era, and happy with that..

[@DavidBromage]

A few more proposed lines to keep the topic going: - A 2008 proposal to run a monorail along the M4 between Reading and Heathrow. - The Windsor Link Railway (which would be an interesting video in itself) which had a proposed connection to Heathrow Terminal 5. - The "Heathwick" high speed line between Luton and Gatwick via Heathrow. First proposed in the 1990s and again in 2011. - Heathrow Airtrack between Waterloo and Heathrow Terminal 5. - A BAA proposal to run Heathrow Express services to St Pancras via the Dudding Hill line. - Many proposals to extend from Heathrow Terminal 5 to the Great Western Main Line at Langley. - HS4Air to connect HS1 and HS2 via Gatwick and Heathrow.

[@davidchilds9590]

"Jet-powered helicopters" - always the futuristic alternative to the monorail!

[@antontsau]

nope, it used to exist. Until New York Airways successfully crashed on top of PanAm building.

[@randomscb-40charger78]

⁠@@antontsauIronically in their final years, they flew the DHC-6 Twin Otter, so even New York Airways wasn’t entirely convinced helicopters could provide all their services.

[@TheHoveHeretic]

The future isn't what it used to be! 😟

[@Macilmoyle]

So the title for this video should be "Bennie & The Jets" 😀

[@michaelwright2986]

/nerdmode on/ Not strictly a helicopter; the rotodyne combined a tip-jet powered rotor with fixed wings, with forward propulsion by turboprops, which also provided compressed gases for the tip-jets (I don't think there was combustion at the rotor tips--they weren't quite that, err, ambitious). Not a dumb proposal for the problem of low forward speeds of helicopters, and less mechanically challenging than the USMC Osprey. /nerdmode off/ Obviously another solution that couldn't handle the mass transit part of the traffic, but the idea of an expensive but quick way of getting to Central London (or, indeed, other destinations) is not obviously nuts. What killed it was the noise. As a little boy, I got taken to Farnborough, and I saw and heard it. Noisy. Not as noisy as a lightly-loaded Vulcan doing a near-vertical climb immediately after take-off, which was felt rather than heard; but you wouldn't want to work anywhere near where the Rotodyne might take off or land.

[@legolandstation3696]

I was about to nod off for an afternoon nap listening to this, when i was abruptly awoken with with " jet helicopters" tell me more Jago!!!!

[@paulblake1164]

Butlins Skegness 1975 I was six years old when I rode my first monorail. It was like being in the future.

[@ggthepianoman9870]

… and Butlins Minehead over the swimming pool 👍🏻

[@julesmo323]

Except you where in Butlins.

[@AtheistOrphan]

@@julesmo323- Well one can close one’s eyes and dream! 🚝

[@paulblake1164]

@@julesmo323 I was six. Any new experience when you are six years old feels good and offers prospects for what could be. I am not going to apologise for having a childhood. Have you ever been on a monorail, had a childhood, or were you born an adult?

[@julesmo323]

@@paulblake1164 Why take it so hard. Do you not have the ability to laugh at a simple joke. What has your life become that you live on such a razors edge that you take offense at such a comment?

[@tantaf123]

come on guys, you can’t lie. this man is criminally underrated

[@AnthonyHancock-s7v]

I'm number 90 and proud

[@AberdonaiBrum101]

@@AnthonyHancock-s7v 2,405 I was 8th on one of And more centrals videos

[@JohnyG29]

By whom?

[@AnthonyHancock-s7v]

@@JohnyG29 The wider population are not aware of him.

[@TheHoveHeretic]

Not by me he isn't. Our Mr Hazzard is a voice of reasoned calm in a world gone mad.

[@Flymochairman1]

That was the best pronunciation of "Milngavie" I've heard on this platform ever! 10/10 Great video too! Cheers!

[@ZGryphon]

If the advertisement at 2:58 were the poster for a film instead of an actual proposed transit system, I would instantly conclude, "Reg Hill and Derek Meddings worked on this." The aesthetic is so absolutely prefigural (is that a word? it is now!) of _Thunderbirds_ et al.

[@michaelocyoung]

In one of those odd coincidences, this vid published on the day Heathrow's "conventional" rail services are having a meltdown and only the Tube can reach the Terminals. This reminds me of the day Tom Scott published a video about Tower Bridge on the day Tower Bridge's bascules got stuck in the up position for the afternoon. Influencers eh.

[@graemer3657]

The Wuppertal monorail is amazing and over 100 years old. Much better to go over houses than under them in heavily mined (excavated) and waterlogged land

[@ThatGeezer]

Just don't try the elephant thing again...

[@robertwilloughby8050]

The fact that Wuppertal is 5 towns stitched together along a river valley is a contributing factor too!😅

[@graemer3657]

@@robertwilloughby8050 theres also a shorter one at he "nearby" Dusseldorf airport, maybe they like monorails in that area :)

[@andrewhotston983]

Except the Schwebebahn doesn't go over houses. Most of the time it's over water.

[@tsbrownie]

I've been on a monorail in SE Asia. Max speed, 30 kph. Shook like it was coming off the rails, uh, rail. A month after I was on it, a wheel came off and went through the hood of a taxi below.

[@FeoragForsyth]

The third monorail proposal to Heathrow might have been the one from French company SAFEGE, who made the monorail in Fahrenheit 451. Interestingly, this was the work of Hugh Fraser, who had been George Bennie's engineer. German company ALWEG, also had a proposal for a Heathrow monorail. They were responsible for the Disney monorails, and the Tokyo monorail to Haneda airport. So that's four!

[@AtheistOrphan]

Rather oddly in that film the passengers enter and exit the monorail via the emergency exit.

[@fisk0]

@@AtheistOrphan makes sense in a world where firefighters start fires!

[@Fraslet]

I fully admit that I was waiting with baited breath for your pronunciation of Milngavie 🎉👋🏻

[@eftalanquest]

i like how made a video about gadgetbahns without saying the word gadgetbahn. but then again you're not a mild mannered canadian but a snarky brit.

[@johnmurray8428]

Some of us are both.

[@TrimeshSZ]

Or maybe he just realises that "gadgetbahn" is one of those pointless neologisms that means nothing because it has no real definition. Sure, you could define it as "novel transport system that I don't personally like" - but that's a definition that's so subjective it's essentially worthless. Honestly, whenever I see someone using it my immediate reaction is "OK, you are an idiot".

[@TalesOfWar]

@@TrimeshSZ Gareth Denis has a flow chart on such things. You should check it out. Also Gareth in general, he has a lot of good content and knows his stuff when it comes to the world of rail based shenanigans.

[@TrimeshSZ]

@@TalesOfWar So you are basically saying I should take the personal position of some little twat on KZbin as being definitive? Thanks, but no thanks. Actually, he was precisely the person that got me annoyed about the term "gadgetbahn" in the first place.

[@mittfh]

Also not a snarky Hungarian (Adam Something)...

[@AnthonyHancock-s7v]

Don't forget Wuppertal

[@marcelwiszowaty1751]

The most famous of them all!

[@ThatGeezer]

The elephant never forgets...

[@AnthonyHancock-s7v]

@@ThatGeezer That poor elephant

[@n17hero]

Next week...The Heathrow Human Cannon

[@brokeafengineerwannabe2071]

This is what a zero dislike video looks like

[@michaelkinsella1559]

Well done for saying Milngavie correctly. I live there and most call centres struggle. When I was at school I just assumed all towns had histories of experimental rail way systems.

[@andrewemery4272]

Hooray for the return of 'Minimalist Linear Cartography'.

[@antontsau]

Monorails have no global advantages over usual (including elevated) rail as fast transport. Similar construction cost, similar performance. It may have sense in opposite use, dense urban area with tight curves and no ground space, something like elevated tram, but in this case it starts to compete with cars and buses, not only slow small onstreet tram, and loses again. Propeller-driven (with onboard engine?) monorail is nightmare at all. The last what Oxford st lacks is wannabeplane "flying" 10m off ground with all noise, blowback and, as bonus, rail supporting structure. And especially if its mass transit like huge airport link, where usual trains can use already existing rail structure on the other end of route. Some special spur to airport, mb elevated or underground, and then - yes, Heathrow Express, CAT in Vienna, Skytrain in Brisbane, Sbahn in Munich and so on - regular existing rail pathes all over the city, 4-10 carriages at once, without need to build something new specific right in the densiest place in town.

[@michaelrobinson166]

There was one other proposal of a Heathrow Monorail I'm aware of. In 2003, Hounslow Council had committee meetings regarding a monorail from Hammersmith to Heathrow or Kingston to Heathrow. The document is "A4 Corridor - Monorail" and it made a fascinating read.

[@heatherjones6647]

Bennie and the mono-jets.

[@proanimali]

You do know (of course you do) that there is a monorail in Wuppertal, Germany, that has successfully used the local river Wupper to travel through the town since 1901. The town being in a valley and not many roads there due to the steep incline of the valley bed, the monorail was a way of using the river as a means of transportation. In 1950, the "Schwebebahn" transported an elephant as a gimmick for a circus, and it jumped out of the waggon 10 metres to the flat bed of the river below. It was unharmed because the bed was muddy at that point.

[@ThatGeezer]

What we really need for the Heathrow link is a giant roller-coaster. Good for the environment, since it will be gravity powered, just needing a lifting mechanism at the end, and entertaining for the tourists too. Or if that proves too expensive, a dedicated electrically-assisted-pogo-stick pathway would take at least some of the load off the existing transport infrastructure. We have to think outside the box...

[@highpath4776]

If only Yerkes had been around in the Monorail age

[@AnnabelSmyth]

Was that a photo of the Wuppertalbahn (Wuppertal suspended railway)? That is terrific fun to ride on if you are ever in the area.

[@Alan-ln3ls]

If you mean the grey one with red stripes, no, that's the Shonan Monorail in Japan. The Wuppertaler Schwebebahn (similarly running suspended from the rail) is older and seemingly more heavily engineered with massive steel arch supports.

[@eekee6034]

"I understand they're popular in Asia," he says over a picture of a type of monorail known for its popularity in Germany. :D It was so striking, it's got me wondering if it was deliberate. :) Incidentally, the capacity issue reminds me of some of my OpenTTD games where I had to use lower-speed higher-capacity trains inter-city because the express trains just didn't have the capacity. The game has been rebalanced to improve that, but I still like to add very fast futuristic trains anyway.

[@fredsmith6725]

There's a working monorail at the beaulieu motor museum in Hampshire.😊

[@Saint_Dan132]

oh wow the first english fella to pronounce milngave correctly, bravo

[@highpath4776]

Dont forget the average Comet or left over WW2 dakota didnt carry more than 50-100 passengers

[@mrcogginsgarage7062]

A town with the money is like a mule with a spinning wheel no one knows how he got it and dang if he knows what to do with it.

[@metropod]

(Sees thumbnail) Alright, who was digging around in Gerry Anderson’s storage shed again…?

[@teecefamilykent]

Yes, yes, yes you can stop talking about heathrow! Monorails fudged up Springfield...love ya videos, JH for PM!

[@eddisstreet]

Dusty Springfield?

[@NomicFin]

There's actually surprisingly many monorails (which is to say, more than 2) in Germany. There's one in Wuppertal which I believe is the oldest still operational one in the world, and a fairly recent one in Dusseldorf. The big issue with monorails is that the tracks are a lot more expensive than regular railway tracks, even if they do have a smaller footprint due to being able to be built on elevated pylons. That small footprint is why there's multiple monorails in Japan, where cities are extremely densely built and acquiring the land needed to build a new railway line in a city might be extremely expensive if not impossible. So the despite costing more per mile of track the monorail can still end up cheaper because you need a much smaller area of land. The reason Dusseldorf got its monorail was the same: they needed a rail connection from the new airport to the city center, but there wasn't enough space available for a conventional rail line while the monorail could just have its pylons placed between the Autobahn lanes.

[@disphoto]

The main problem with monorails is that they almost always make no sense in terms of capacity, engineering, economics, or energy efficiency. In very rare and special cases, they may work. They have to be light, which limits their capacity (as transportation capacity goes, Monorails are considered "Light rail." To get enough capacity, the trains would be so big and heavy that the monorail beams and their supports would become ridiculously expensive. They run on MANY rubber tires to run on and to keep them upright, which reduces efficiency and will eventually fail. Switching tracks with monorails is very complex and expensive compared to normal rail. They ALWAY have to be supported above the ground; it is is a continuous bridge and bridges are expensive. They don't integrate well with other rail systems. To mention a few of the serious drawbacks. Even Disney World, which is a showcase for the monorails when if first open quickly had to add boats to get people to the parks (for a while they ran trams until the boats were completed).

[@FushionJulz]

There is a very successful (and old) monorail in Wuppertal in Germany...the Schwebebahn (suspended railway)

[@davidellis2021]

Fairey Rotodyne - interesting. I know it's not really your thing but a video on the Brabazon committee would be interesting.

[@eattherich9215]

@3:15, that looks like something out of a 50s futurists' comic book story. That was never going to be built in any way, shape or form.

[@johnarthur4555]

We do have experience in designing and manufacturing monorails, Alstom in Derby have exported a few of them world wide.

[@crystallineentity3277]

Was that the Fairey Rotodyne at the end? Cool!

[@michaelwhite8908]

Yes it was

[@darrenaitcheson795]

I'm thinking the fact that it says "Fairey Rotodyne" on it in two places is a bit of a giveaway. 😉

[@crystallineentity3277]

@@darrenaitcheson795 that'll teach me to watch KZbin without my glasses on! :D

[@erichhouchens3711]

What, no mention of The Simpson's "Marge vs the Monorail" season 4 episode 12? BTW - monorails have also caught on in South America as Sao Paulo now has two lines. Here in the states Seattle decided to go with Light Rail (trams) instead of extending the one mile 1962 Worlds Fair monorail.

[@CalvinsWorldNews]

And yet again it's a train where it's all seats and no space for bags! I just did a trip to London (from the US) and It's insane that every transport option to an airport has space for 50 people per carriage, yet only 6 bags, or 8 if you stack them creatively. On the train I took to Glasgow I had 3 large 50lb suitcases for me and the family, which I had to keep next to the doors because (again) there was only space for 3 or 4 pieces of luggage. I was even told off dismissively by the conductor who asked why I even needed so many bags, to which the answer was "because I'm visiting for 4 weeks and I also have a wife and 2 kids"

[@comicus01]

I'm thinking the train nerds of the world won't be happy until Heathrow has an enormous rail station/terminal the size of Waterloo. Lol. Another point made by another youtuber somewhere on here: monorails have to be built elevated or down below in a trench. Can't be built at grade and have a road crossing like with conventional rail. I think the requirement to elevate the entire system greatly adds to the cost compared to conventional rail. The cost to train people (nice pun!) to operate and maintain them would probably be minimal, I suspect operating and maintaining is a lot closer to conventional rail than a lot of people realize.

[@woodyseed-pods1222]

Thank you for mentioning Bennie's railplane - deserves to be better known.

[@neilmcfarlane5644]

I'm from Bearsden (the next town along from Milngavie - pretty good pronunciation by the way 😜) and my dad remembers seeing the remnants of the test track AND bits of the actual vehicle out in a field, in the early fifties. There's a model of it in the Glasgow Riverside Transport Museum. Good video, as ever, thanks! xNfMx

[@hairyairey]

Full points for the correct pronunciation of Milngavie Jago. I bet you can do Hawick and Happisburgh too!

[@Andrewjg_89]

Heathrow Airport doesn’t need a Monorail. What it needs is a new railway line from London Waterloo to Heathrow Terminal 5 known as the Heathrow Airport Southern Rail Link and to use the former Eurostar platforms at Waterloo. As there has been plans for a new direct airport rail link that would be lot quicker than using Heathrow Express from London Paddington and the Elizabeth Line.

[@PhillipBicknell]

The typeface (or was it hand-written or stencilled?) on those drawings of the later scheme took me back to the late-80s working for a small company, when I was doing the pipework drawings and a part-time driving instructor was doing the parts manufacture drawings - his lettering was just like that, very old-school, whereas I used the ISO 3098-1 stencils.

[@distinctdipole]

Thanks Jago! I can't hear the word "monorail" without the song from The Simpsons entering my head. I now have it stuck as an earworm! Otherwise, great video.

[@zaphod4245]

The idea of a rail link to Heathrow via the Feltham line makes me think of how they could have replaced the Eurostar terminal at Waterloo with a central air terminal. Have express trains to Heathrow (via the Feltham line with a new link), and to Gatwick (using the old Eurostar flyover onto the Southern line). There would be plenty of space for the check in counters and you'd have luggage cars on the trains to carry the luggage. Waterloo would also be much more convenient as a terminus for an airport express than Paddington or Victoria, there's more around it and it's better connected to more of central london.

[@BuzzinsPetRock78]

So that second "monorail" was pretty much an over-engineered guided bus system? I mean, I'm a fan of guided bus systems, but his idea seems to have gone through extreme lengths to make it less practical than just sticking a bus on a flat concrete road with raised kerbs.

[@gnnascarfan2410]

Ah yes, a story about the 20th century equivalent of modern day tech bros making trains worse.

[@neuralwarp]

Ah, the Rotadyne. A lost chance. It still holds the speed record between central London and central Paris. Over to you Jago.

[@jchinuk]

George Bennie, especially in his later designs, seems to have decided to re-purpose old aircraft fuselages as his monorail cars.

[@SteamCrane]

The early attempt at 1:00 shows the key elements and shortcomings of all modern monorails: 1. A top riding "monorail" is actually 3 or 5 rails. One top support rail, and either 1 or 2 stabilizing guide rails on each side. If the support wheels have double flanges, just 1 stabilizing rail is needed. If it's flangeless, you need 2 stabilizing guide rails on each side. 2. Switches require moving a whole section of track, rather than just points. In this case, only 3 of the possible 4 routes are actually accessible. 3. The gap in the car bottoms for the rail wastes space. 4. The whole thing is perched on top of the rail, and is thus inherently unstable. 5. In this early case, 2 boilers to be fed. Suspended has slightly fewer problems, but the support structure tends to be bigger and more oppressive.

[@darrenaitcheson795]

What we need is that mad rocket plane thing from France that the Tim Traveller visited.

[@roderickmain9697]

The construction problem I see with monorails (and Ive been on the one in Wuppertal) is that they seem to have a lot more metalwork and/or concrete than traditional rail systems. That probably makes them more expensive from the off. Add in some visual intrusion/clutter and people are off-put. The mag-lev shuttle at Birmingham airport is quite a nice idea but is not particularity fast. Its not exactly meant every airport (or other facility) has to have one. Still, you have to give inventors some space to come up with something novel. You never know, one may yet hit on something really good.

[@archstanton6102]

I have also been on Wuppertal system as a tourist. Did you see the monorail at Duesseldorf airport?

[@AnnabelSmyth]

For Wuppertal, it was a solution to the problem of the river running through the town, which meant a conventional metro wasn't practical.

[@marcelwiszowaty1751]

There isn't a maglev at Birmingham Airport anymore. It was quite unreliable so was replaced by a more conventional cable-hauled system (on the original elevated structure)

[@kaliou6645]

🦽Legend says that Jago rides his Monocycle🎩 📜

[@kinocchio]

Heathrow should get a proper mainline station.

[@caw25sha]

Bennie should have fitted folding wings to his rail plane so it could take off when it got to the airport.

[@iancharles6256]

As a child (I must have been about 4 or 5) my Dad took me to Manchester Town Hall to see a model of the proposed Monorail to be built up Rochdale Road from the City Centre to Middleton, as it would have affected where we lived. It was going to be finished by 1970. I’m still waiting for it 50 years later.

[@deathbag]

Full marks for the correct pronunciation of Milngavie

[@googlesucks6029]

It's not for it London, it's more of a Shelbyville idea.

[@kenmorris100]

These were the stuff of the Eagle magazine in the 50salong with Hollywood films portraying the future. There is of course one vey successful airport to city centre monorail, using British technology, namely the Maglev line between Shanghai Airport and downtown Shanghai. Quite an experience to ride.

[@tsungiraichiramba]

Let’s call it Jago Hazzard Airport

[@ricequackers]

The only advantage for monorails I can think of is in hilly cities with steep grades (rubber tyres provide better traction) and dense urban cores (takes up less space and can make tighter turns). But even there, VAL trains might be a better alternative.

[@scottc1589]

"Monorails... ...there are various reasons they never took off over here." Though "Air Rail" seems a bit like a fly-by-night scheme!

[@paulketchupwitheverything767]

It's not a monorail, but there are still the driverless electric pods at Heathrow Terminal 5 that are low speed alternative type of transport link. They run between the car park and the terminal.

[@neuralwarp]

They move slowly, but there's no platform waits, no offpeak closures, and they run door to door.

[@googleboughtmee]

The monorail at Alton Towers is apparently still going! I used to love seeing them at Butlins too.

[@timogul]

I can see why that monorail in the "downtown" picture wouldn't work, the wheels would have slammed into the support crossbeams. That car was about one second from going airborne.

[@ThomasGray-g9e]

Monorail!

[@john1703]

Birmingham Airport briefly (1984-95) had a Maglev to the nearby WCML station. Does that count?

[@AtheistOrphan]

@@john1703- I suppose technically a maglev would be a ‘Zerorail’.

[@tpaul2866]

I’ve only managed the Beaulieu motor museum monorail. Sigh. Slightly south of Beaulieu I recently visited Gatcombe Church on the Isle of Wight. A certain grave stone of Sir Sidney Vectis may be of interest? He built the ill fated Chillerton, Gatcombe, and Newport canal. Maybe at some point Jago you could cover the story?

[@alejandrayalanbowman367]

Hi Jago from Spain. That closing shot of a Piccadilly train running into the station has an awful lot of space above it so would it be possible to have special double decker Piccadilly line trains running from Central London to the airport.

[@iankemp1131]

Only on the open air sections - at either end the top of the train would get sliced off in the tunnels!

[@aliendon73]

There was a monorail in Birmingham, linking the train station to the airport, it was there from 1984. It was the first maglev train in the UK. Then it was replaced by a cable car system called the Air-Rail Link, to which opened in 2003.

[@johnhockenhull2819]

I was going to mention this. I remember using it a couple of times.

[@jfmezei]

Working monorail was done in the 1960s at Pinewood to replicate a secret lair in Japan where they launched rockets. (You only live twice). Monorail has reduced footprint and because isnt “rail” does not hape to paybthe premium added to rail products. itherwise they are slow people movers. Though Japan does have a monorail fronan airport to downtown.

[@PokhrajRoy.]

I feel like Bennie would’ve had success as a Sci-Fi Writer. He has a great imagination.

[@stephenspackman5573]

Wait, did you use that map again, _again?_

[@brj_han]

This is an excellent idea if you don't like your bird population... 😁

[@PokhrajRoy.]

2:27 It seems fun as a concept but it’s dangerous in praxis

[@angelmessenger8240]

Every time someone mentions a monorail all I can think of is the Simpsons episode.

[@adrianbromfild8624]

Jago is certainly flying with all these videos about Heathrow!

[@batman51]

The fetish for monorails is an odd one. Having two rails gives you stability for free, a monorail has to have all sorts of balancing mechanisms and, in practice, the "mono" rail tends to be as wide as the spurned duorail.

[@robshipway2269]

Was there not a monorail link between Birmingham International station and airport?

[@AberdonaiBrum101]

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