E-44 wrote:Wasn't it Adtranz that built the EWR system? At the time, I think they were jointly owned by ABB and Daimler/Benz and then it was sold to and absorbed by Bombardier.
That's correct. The original contract went to
VonRoll, a Swiss monorail manufacturer which has been making monorails of the type seen at EWR for other intramural systems(theme park, airport peoplemover, and such) for quite a while. In 1994 while construction was still under way VonRoll sold it's monorail designs to ADTranz, which changed the switch design from traversers to radial switches before the line opened as a peoplemover between the terminals in 1995. I believe then in 2001 when Bombardier bought up ADTranz and the EWR Rail Station expansion program was underway BBD changed the signalling system to their own design. The result is that the EWR Airtrain monorail has become a pretty graphic example what happens when too many interests are involved. VonRoll monorails were never noted for their swiftness or ability to handle large crowds, but it's my experience that the EWR Monorail is slower and even more poorly adapted to the potential crowding situations than any other similar design.
I rode those elevated thingys both in Sydney anf Wupperthal.
In Sydney the vehicle rides on top of a rail.
Funny you should mention the Sydney Metro Monorail, because it's the exact same design as the EWR Airtrain monorail, so if it's a monorail then the EWR Airtrain must be as well, right? Both systems use VonRoll Mark III trains with six powered bogies and two idler bogies on standard VonRoll guideway. The only difference is that the EWR system is automated, has the ADTranz radial switches, and now the BBD signalling system. I believe the Sydney Monorail may have been the last true VonRoll monorail completed before the company sold its monorail division to ADTranz. Both the Europa Park monorail in Germany and the Alton Towers monorail in England opened after the Sydney Monorail, but both were used Mark II systems transplanted from Spain and Canada, but the Broadbeach, Australia and Singapore Birdpark monorails may both be newer and were 100% Von Roll designs.
Of course the track supports the weight of the train, but if you really want to be technical about it, since the train is not really riding on one rail, it's not a "monorail".
That's perfectly true, although there's only one rail on which the many guide wheels sit, so monorail is still fairly accurate. If one wanted to be really pedantic it could be argued that only the
Wuppertal Schwebebahn and
Dresden Schwebebahn were true monorails and everything else just a poor imitator. However, the definition of monorail only refers to the number of rails a system has, not the number of wheels that sit on those rails, and in the case of Alweg, Intamin, Severn-Lamb, Safege, and Von Roll monorails there's always just one rail. In any event I'm rather glad the EWR monorail cars don't swing freely as the Schwebebahns do. That can be an extremely disconcerting sensation to be in a pendelum while stopped in a station, and it's even more fun to try to board or allight from that pendelum.
I've always kinda wished that the EWR monorail had been built as a larger, faster Alweg monorail. It's possible that the faster Alweg design would have allowed the line to simply be extended up to Newark Penn, rather than force the construction of the EWR Air-Rail station. This would of course be slightly more inconvenient for passengers coming from the south, but would give an easy transfer to and from Lower Manhattan via PATH.
