Monorail Orange...

[FloggingMorgy]

What ever happened to it...and where's monorail blue been?

[Engination]

Monorail Orange was taken apart. I saw it every morning on my train ride to work this summer.

[FloggingMorgy]

Monorail Orange was taken apart. I saw it every morning on my train ride to work this summer.

How sad...why?

[sleepyjeff]

Actually it is not that sad........they are taking it apart so they can reverse imagineer a whole new fleet of monorail trains

[FloggingMorgy]

Actually it is not that sad........they are taking it apart so they can reverse imagineer a whole new fleet of monorail trains

knew those were coming, just didnt know that they had to take her apart...anyway, i think it's sad part is that WDW has 12 and we only have (had) four

[ModHatter]

Last I heard, the new fleet were arriving sometime around 2007, and would be getting a new station as well. Should be a good thing.

However, I never have understood what exactly will be different about the new ones. Could someone fill me in in VERY simple language?

[figment1986]

everything would be new... and thus not breaking down often.

[Druggas]

I heard that parts were hard to come by. That's the reason for dismantling one of them. I think it was the driver of the monorail that told me that.

[ModHatter]

everything would be new... and thus not breaking down often.

So, they're fixing the guts but keeping the shell?

[ganggreen4jc]

My understanding is that Monorail Orange was the guinea pig. It seems the company that built the monorail trains went out of business several years ago and the blueprints went down with them. They had to take apart one monorail (Orange was volunteered!) and completely dismantle it and, as an earlier poster said, "re-engineer" it literally from the ground up. Piece by piece had to be measured and re-blueprinted.

If this is true, how could the imagineers have not kept a copy of the original blueprints?

[figment1986]

it might have been kept.. but lost in the archives getting filed away....

Anyway... since the beam is smaller than a standard beam.. they had to get these trains custom built.. and the company went out of buisness.. thus they have to build them with help themselves.....

(probably look the same but feel and ride differently and be safer...)

[Bruce Bergman]

So, they're fixing the guts but keeping the shell?

No, they were taking apart Monorail Orange to make complete and accurate blueprints of it's insides, because more than likely the construction documents they have filed away were incomplete. Or conflicting - nobody's sure which revisions are in place.

Since the dimensions of certain things are critical, accurate measurements are vital - Using a trained Mark I Eyeball to judge the dimensions certainly can work as a construction method, but it takes longer, and often takes several attempts till you get it right - DAMHIKT. (Day job...)

And when they take it all apart, they can do visual and mechanical tests to see where there are engineering goofs that have to be fixed when building the new trains. There's nothing quite like a 10-Million-Mile road test to show hidden cracks and fatigue failures of the chassis and panels, hidden rust-catching wet spots where the rain leaks in and collects, excessive wear points on the suspension or door mechanisms...

I don't remember the exact dates, but the Mark V trains they're using now are riding on the same chassis the Mark III was built on - they rebuilt the bodies on the old frames at Ride And Show Engineering one at a time. So between the Mark III and Mark V bodies, they've been around the beamway a good 1,000,000+ times each.

Gad, if Detroit could only build cars that good, where they could go 10 Million Miles and be ready for more... :lol:

--<< Bruce >>--

[Druggas]

I just wish they would run the monorail all through Anaheim. They do it in Vegas, but not in the city that they started in.

[ModHatter]

I just wish they would run the monorail all through Anaheim. They do it in Vegas, but not in the city that they started in.

Some day... heck, now that the awful OCTA Centerline project has been shelved, the time is ripe for Monorails. Especially since this county needs some mass transit that can travel along diagonals, instead of the terrible Etch-a-sketch method they use now. Between the 5 and the 405, OC is all about the hypotenuse, not the sides.

[pyrateslife4me84]

They sort of do it in Vegas...the monorails there are extremely unreliable, constantly breaking down, and while they opened about a year ago, they have been closed for repairs for a majority of that time, months on end, due to tires flying off the monorails and other assorted problems. So I wouldn't say the monorail system exactly works in Vegas...

[PeoplemoverMatt]

^ It used to until they made the system way too big for it's own good.
Anyway, a long time ago a monorail CM told me that orange was going to be the first of the "new" monorails that was going to debut next year sometime. I remember him being very detailed in his explanation so he either had a very elborate story or he was highly involved in what's actually going on.

-- Peoplemover "Still frightens me when my high school junior students don't know what the prefix 'mono' means" Matt

[ah schucks]

Reverse engineering rules!

[ModHatter]

They sort of do it in Vegas...the monorails there are extremely unreliable, constantly breaking down, and while they opened about a year ago, they have been closed for repairs for a majority of that time, months on end, due to tires flying off the monorails and other assorted problems. So I wouldn't say the monorail system exactly works in Vegas...

Well, Vegas is the only system that seems to have these kinds of problems. Heck, after a recent Japanese quake, the Kitakyushu monorail was safety-inspected and operating again in about three hours... Tokyo-Haneda has been operating without flaw since 1964. If we can't make Monorails work in America, it's not really the fault of the Monorails.

[figment1986]

The LV monorail was expanded... and what happened is they got Bombader to built the trains too fast... many of the probiems were the manufactures oproblems... however structurly.. the track and everything else is working fine...

[Bruce Bergman]

Reverse engineering rules!

Yeah, when you reverse engineer the old product you get to learn from, and eliminate, all the goofs they made when they built the last version. :bow: Unfortunately, you also get to add a few new goofs of your own...

--<< Bruce >>--