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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."
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
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.
"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.
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
[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 |
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!
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.