Monorails of the 19th century – Adrian Garner

On 24th February Adrian Garner spoke to us about Monorails of the 19th Century.

Adrian has written two books on monorails: Monorails of the 19th Century and Monorails of the Early 20th Century. By his own admission, he is more interested in the earlier monorails as they were rather more quirky than what came later and his talk focused on such railways up to 1900.

There were a variety of weird concepts promoted, some of which managed to find the finance to actually build lines, but most of which proved to be ephemeral. A few lasted longer e.g. the Listowel and Ballybunnion Railway in Ireland, built to the Lartigue system. Lartigue, a Frenchman, cut his teeth on a monorail used to carry esparto grass in Algeria, trains being powered by mules.

In terms of the obvious problem of balance, this was not quite the issue one might anticipate if the centre of gravity of locos and rolling stock was kept below the level of the railhead, although stabilising rails were used on typical A-frame supported tracks. A truly bizarre concept was Larmanjat’s monorail designed and built for Lisbon. Even more surprising was that the system had actually been trialled near Paris, apparently sufficiently successfully to cause the scheme’s backers to order no less than 16 locomotives from Sharp Stewart in 1872 (Works Nos 2254-55, 2270-75 and 2286-93 for those who wish to look them up). The locos, described as 4-2-4T, had two large road wheels at the outer ends of the single central driving axle, which were intended to transmit the power to the road surface (and provide balance) but with much of the weight being carried on the central wheel on the monorail. The obvious problem was ensuring that there was just the right amount of weight on the road wheels, not perhaps insuperable on perfectly flat level track but immediately a problem if the gradient changed. The front bogie could be raised or lowered to change the weight distribution. Not surprisingly however the system in Lisbon was a failure.

The funicular monorail up Vesuvius was covered, its claims to fame including inspiring a well-known song “Funiculi, funicula” (funicular up, funicular down).

The well-known Wuppertal suspended system just made it into the period, work having started in 1897, and it was unusual if not unique in being highly successful and still in use to the present day. We finished with a brief look at the Brennan gyroscope monorail which Adrain thought had ultimately failed to be developed because of the safety issues caused by the large rapidly spinning gyroscope masses and what would happen if one shattered.

A thoroughly entertaining presentation . We had an audience of 28 people