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Build Your Own Monorail
jpatokal writes "Building your own roller coaster may be fun, but how about something a little more practical -- like a monorail in your back yard? Kim Petersen designed his from scratch, building the elevated track from wood, scavenging the engine from a motorized walker and handcrafting the train from sheet metal. Total cost: $4000! See the photo tour and the construction history."
Google has a cache of the text.
More practical?
More practical for someone who needs a tram in their backyard? K.
What would be more practical for the referenced site is a webserver than handle more than 5 hits per hour.
c-hack.com |
And how much does having a $4000 monorail in your backyard increase your home owners insurance? :p
(to be sung in the key of C...)
[Lyle Lanley] Well sir, there's nothin' on earth like a genuine, bonafide, electrified, six-car monorail! What'd I say?
[Ned Flanders] Monorail!
[Lyle] What's it called?
[Patty & Selma] Monorail!
[Lyle] That's right, monorail!
[All chant] Monorail, monorail, monorail...
[Ms Hoover] I hear those things are awfully loud!
[Lyle] It glides as softly as a cloud!
[Apu] Is there a chance the track could bend?
[Lyle] Not on your life, my Hindu friend!
[Barney] What about us braindead slobs?
[Lyle] You'll be given cushy jobs!
[Grandpa] Were you sent here by the devil?
[Lyle] No, good sir, I'm on the level.
[Chief Wiggum] The ring came off my pudding can.
[Lyle] Take my pen knife, my good man!
I swear it's Springfield's only choice;
Throw up your hands and raise your voice!
Monorail!
What's it called?
Monorail!
Once again!
Monorail!
[Marge] But Main Street's still all cracked and broken...
[Bart] Sorry, mom, the mob has spoken!
[All] Monorail! Monorail! Monorail! Monorail!
[Homer] Mono- d'oh!
I'm not to certain as I haven't had my own house or type of place where I could build something "in the back." Are there any guidelines/regulations one would have to meet with the city to do this? I mean it seems there could be a lot of safety/security issues with this. I mean there's lots of litigations just over people having a pool in their backyard let alone this. :)
( o ) one could say I'm rather baked
He made raised his track a good tree meters off the ground. If he made it half a m off the ground it would still be a monorail. He must really trust his engineering abilities.
Of course the guy with a roller coaster was much more brave. His creation would do loops and stuff and looked much less solid.
Sheesh...
M C: www.monorails.org/tMspages/Niles.html+&hl=en&ie=UT F8
Here's the google cache.
And in case you don't trust an anonymous post:
http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:colgaaDa9r
Mr Snrub votes that we spend our money on the nuclear power plant instead...
Monorail time... just watch the Simpsons quotes roll in!
You gotta admit this is a fairly creative project. Wow, this guy must have alot of time and money to spare.
/.ed. Maybe we should find a way to mirror/cache the linked pages automatically so we don't hit some guy's site 1e20 times and cost him $10k in bandwidth usage fees. Just a suggestion.
But, who gets you down from there if your train gets stuck? I dont see any ladders around. Rope ladder maybe?
What is this thing powerred by? Human-power, electric?
P.S. Bah, the site seems to be
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
"Seriously, why in the hell would you want this? "
Rail building materials: $4,000
Roses to sooth diplomatic relations with your wife: $100
Being the coolest dad on your block: Priceless
"Derp de derp."
This is more of a shelbyville.org story
Error: Erection reset by beer.
Click here!
Hey, check it out! It's their next door neighbor Wilson!:
http://www.monorails.org/webpix%202/nmt10.JPG
"Derp de derp."
Seems to be /.ed. Here are the google caches:
main page
monorail history
Photo tour
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
Quimby: And now, I'd like to turn things over to our Grand Marshall, Mr. Leonard Nimoy.
Nimoy: I'd say this vessel could do at least Warp Five.
[appreciative laughter from the crowd]
Quimby: And let me say, ``May the Force Be With You!''
Nimoy: [annoyed] Do you even know who I am?
Quimby: [indignant] I think I do. Weren't you one of the Little Rascals?
"I named the big one bitey!" - Homer Simpson
Also nearby is the Redwood Valley Railroad, which is in slightly larger scale than the monorail and runs half-scale steam trains. Redwood Valley has quite a layout, with a roundhouse, turntable, sidings, bridges, and tunnels.
Niles was once the Western terminus of the first transcontinental railroad. So there's much railroad history there.
O.K. Someone want to go in with me on a backyard maglev?
And issue your own customized terrorism warning!
Just imagine the real estate ad when the guy tries to sell the place: "3 bedroom, 2 baths, large kitchen, livingroom, backyard with pool, surrounded by a large garden, and a wooden monorail track which circles the house. Perfect for getting from the basketball court to the pool. It may take longer than walking, but it's fun!"
Hey! This could be the first time that more than 10 people have gone to the monorails.org in a day.
Look around when you're there, and you'll learn why the monorail is a practical, underused, safe form of transport. It's been stigmatized by Disney. (I've been a monorail advocate for some time) It's a very cool site.
-twb
We're working on plans to build an expanded monorail system in Seattle. True, compared to Kim's backyard monorail, it's a little longer (14 miles) and a little pricier ($970M-$1.7B), but it'll haul about 60,000 people per day, and likely turn an operational profit. And it's probably the only transit system in the country created by a citizens' initiative...yes, that's right, no monorail salesman or catchy jingle needed--just a good grassroots campaign! For more info, visit The Elevated Transportation Company. The plan goes to the voters November 2002.
For info on the campaign (which I'm helping out with--yes, this is a shameless plug), visit Rise Above It All
Maybe because it's ... what's the word ... "fun"?
Just because it's something you wouldn't consider fun to research, design, build, and finally ride, doesn't mean others wouldn't. I'd love something like this.
The bragging rights alone make this endeavour worth the effort :)
Read my stuff.
This guy lives in the Bay Area (notice the BART train go past his backyard in the pictures?) Now, from my rudimentary knowledge of geology, the Bay Area is susceptible to earthquakes on a regular basis. Could this spell possible trouble for a home-built monorail?
[teacher]: Brian, tell me the plural of ox, and use it in a sentence.
[brian]: Uh, oxen. I saw a herd of oxen.
[teacher]: Good. Now try "box."
[brian]: Boxen. I ate two boxen of doughnuts.
[teacher]: No Brian, it's boxes. Let's try another one. What's the plural of goose?
[brian]: Geese. I saw a flock of geese.
[teacher]: Good. Now how about "moose?"
[brian]: Mee... MOOSEN! I saw a flock of moosen! There were many much moosen! They were in the woodses--woodsen! They were eatinen the foodeninen!
[teacher]: Brian, you're an imbecile.
[brian]: Imbecilen!
(transcribed from memory. probably lots of mistakes)
c-hack.com |
No, it's "I call the big one Bitey."
How can y'all bash the creator of this masterpiece left and right? This is creativity in pure form... a technical wonder... 100 points of "coolness"... one of the most amazing things I have ever seen! I know people who have spent half this much on the game Everquest buying intangible items, yet I doubt such purchases would drum up anywhere near the negative response that spending $4000 on this creation has elicited on Slashdot... Give this guy some credit!
then again this is comming from the person who has like 9 computers and people wonder if they all actually have real uses
I beg to differ. If you're forced into running Windows, then having 9 computers is completely justifiable. Consider the stability when running the nine applications you require on nine different machines? Boggles the mind doesn't it?
The friendly folks at the Monorail Society might disagree with you on that. Monorails are an efficient solution for crowded cities, since they can be built in the air, and as (by definition) the car is wider than the track they use less space than light rail. Their speed and capacity are more than sufficient for most applications, and they cost a lot less than building subways. This is why there has been a bit of a monorail renaissance lately, with cities as diverse as Las Vegas, Chiba, Kuala Lumpur and Okinawa (Naha) building monorail systems.
Cheers,
-j.
Maybe a mechanical engineer in the audience can enlighten me?
And, on a side note: can somebody explain to me his remark at the last page of the Tour: This picture just screams "only in America," doesn't it? I find his project very beautiful, but what's so American about it? Is it really unimaginable for US citizens that this kind of impressive creative tinkering also happens in other countries?
To cite someone who built his own jet engine (iirc that was a Slashdot story some time ago as well): "If you have to ask, you will never understand."
I guess it's like building your own operating system or other such crazy ideas.
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
Some cities regulate just about everything you could possibly do. That includes permits for decks, patios, sidewalks, trees, etc. It gets rather insane and annoying at times--but this typically is only done in those subdivisions were they want everything to look "similar".
Most cities, though, don't care much. I have a 15' easement from the road--I cannot build any permanent structures there. After that 15', though, I can build right up to the property line on either side towards my neighbors or all the way back to my fenceline. In the country, things get even more relaxed--you can build just about anything and it's not a problem. Sometimes you are limited to the size you can build a barn without a special permit--but that's generally the worst of it.
Of course, if I were to do something like this 3m in the air, it would look rather odd around here. Folks don't even have plush gardens. Nope, around here it's mostly just folks who have a deck, a tree or two, a fence, and grass. A monorail in my backyard would the the talk of the city for years.
Long, cute, or funny Sigs are just another form of over compensation, used by geeks, nerdz, etc.
YANAP (You Are Not A Poet), either.
But yeah... coolest dad on the block points works for me; now all I need are a wife, kids, and a gigantic back yard.
/Brian
Why do you say that? Why do you think this? Disney had a problem with moving a heckuva lot of mob-level crowds between different areas. Getting back and forth between Epcot and Magic Kingdom is pretty easy due to monorail. For other places in the park, they have hundreds of city transit buses.
When I was there, I thought the monorail did quite well. When the water/fireworks show in Epcot let out, for example, the bus area was a mess and the monorail hauled all manner of people out of the area quickly...
This is a place you can fly in, get a shuttle into the park, stay all week, get around, and never need to rent a car. I think it works well...
Eric
Be who you are...and be it in style!
We have a roller coaster. We have a monorail.
I wanna see someone build thier own Subway, complete with two stops and a building over each one.
Tcl my Pico! There are 10 kinds of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don't.