Walt
Disney World Monorail System
"We Move the World"
Following the September 11th attack, I took down the previous monorail information posted here to protect the guests and cast in the event of Walt Disney World being made a target for further terrorist activity. I have instead decided to post some pictures that I think are cool and talk (however briefly) about the Monorail and some of it's systems.
To the left is a picture of a Mark IV monorail at EPCOT Center. You may be asking, "How can you tell it's a Mark IV?" Well...there's a few ways to tell the difference between a Mark IV and a Mark VI.
There are three essential changes made to the Mark VI monorail that aren't the same as a Mark IV. First, the windows changed because the doors changed. In the Mark IV, the windows are tilted...they aren't square and have more windows than the Mark VI. The reason? The doors weren't automatic in the Mark IV, but are in the Mark VI. Another way to tell the difference between train types is the number of cars. Until sometime in the 1980's, the Mark IV's had only 5 cars. Later, the Mark IV's added a 6th car, like the one pictured here. Also, the Mark IV monorails did not have side mirrors (which I just discovered by looking at these pictures). The final way to tell the difference between train types is their dimensions. A Mark IV is a bit thinner and shorter than a Mark VI. In the Mark IV, you could not stand whereas you can in the Mark VI.
The
Mark IV monorails were used from 1971 until 1989 (and some into 1990).
What happened to those trains? A few of them can still be accounted for.
Monorails Silver and Red were in a storage facility until recently. May 30
through June 6, Monorail Red's Cab 1 will be auctioned on
www.disneyauctions.com, another
flavor of eBay. The remainder of the trains will be assume ably scrapped,
just as their counterparts were disposed of in the early 1990's. The front cab to Mark IV Monorail Blue is located
outside the Contemporary in a storage facility. When exiting the
Contemporary on the Lagoon beam, if you look in the storage sheds below you can
see a blue tarp. That blue tarp covers the nose of the cab. Two
other trains -- Coral and Lime -- were sold to Bally's/MGM Grand Casino in Las Vegas. Disney
reportedly sold them for $3.5 million dollars each, or approximately half of the
price of a new Mark VI. The monorails in Las Vegas are still in use and
reportedly aging well, according to the maintenance supervisor that I emailed a
year or so ago. Bally's/MGM Grand plans to phase out these trains in the
next two years.
These
pictures above and to the left were taken in Monorail Shop. Most of these
are Mark IV Monorails (Red to the left of Silver and Orange are Mark VI's).
These are very rare pictures because the two train types only shared the shop
for a short period of time.
How to these trains run? Are they MAGLEV? No. The trains operate on 600 volts DC, provided to the train via the bus bar on the right-hand side of the train (right side from Cab 1 is positive, left negative). This bus bar is powered by rectifiers placed throughout the beam, most notably the one halfway between EPCOT and the Transportation and Ticket Center, called Rectifier 3/Work Platform. Rectifiers provide the 600VDC and 2000 amps necessary to power the 8 traction motors and 14 air conditioners, as well as some other miscellaneous monitoring and support systems. The trains ride on 124 wheels and tires. Who has the tire account? Typically Goodyear or Michelin.
The tires are filled with gaseous Nitrogen to aide in extinguishing fires if the axle becomes too hot. Disney learned how to do this the hard way, after Mark IV Monorail Silver (pictured left) caught fire 25 June 1985 from an explosion of a side-tire. This fire was both a blessing and an unfortunate event. Disney did learn that fiberglass (which the body of the monorail is made of) does not burn easily. The cause for this fire was pilot error, and with the new trains came further safety precautions to keep this event from happening again. Nitrogen-filled tires, beam contact warnings, and the Alison system help DETER this from happening again. The fire totaled an entire car and the train was inoperable for several months. There were no injuries, but cars 5 and 6 evacuated the train to the roof. To those guests who went to the hospital and were inconvenienced by this incident...they received a 3-day pass to the parks, and approximately 10 hotel rooms were compensated for the night. This even also triggered a media standoff between the Orlando Sentinel and the Walt Disney World Company over pictures published of the charred monorail in the next day's paper. Putting this diplomatically, no media service in Central Florida has since published an unfavorable story about the Company. More information about the fire can be purchased from the Orlando Sentinel Website in their archives.
Subsequently, several other monorail mishaps have occurred, including an incident with Monorail Red and the Work Tractor, several other smoke instances, and a monorail hitting Cast Members. Full text of most of these instances are available on the Sentinel's website. Keep something in mind, however...there have been less than a dozen document able accidents aboard the Walt Disney Monorail System since 1971. And in none of those instances has anyone lost a life or limb. Given the number of people the monorail carries each year, it is far safer than any other mode of transportation available.
Some interesting statistics on the Mark VI (unless noted otherwise), currently operating at the Walt Disney World Resort:
Although
this might look like Monorail Black, it is indeed Monorail Purple. Greg
Geuss, an animator at the Walt Disney Studios, drew this picture for the
Transportation Olympics, or T-Olympics, that were held at Mickey's Retreat.
The T-Olympics was a competition between Magic Kingdom Parking/Toll Plaza,
Monorails, Buses and Watercraft. The design was placed on T-shirts for the
Monorail Team, and was so popular that several hundred were sold. There is
a hidden Mickey at the end of the cyclone, not pictured.
MonorailYellow.com is honored to feature this picture under agreement from Greg
Geuss.
Monorail Shop features a paint booth on beam 10. All monorails were painted between 2001 and 2003 as regularly scheduled maintenance. During this time, Monorail Lime lost the royal blue "delta", which was replaced by a white "delta". Pictures of Monorail Lime prior to 2003 will illustrate the change in paint scheme.
Several monorails have been converted to the new monitoring system (typically referred to as being "Yellow-ised"). As of this writing, Monorails Yellow, Silver, Pink, Gold, and Coral have been converted. The remaining trains are scheduled to be converted before 2008. The new monitoring system was originally featured running Microsoft Windows 2000.
Following the delivery of the new Mark VI monorails in 1990, Disney discovered that the power grid would not support the extra power consumption from the Mark VI's, so their existence on the system was rather limited until something could be done regarding this. As a result, Walt Disney World filed a lawsuit against the manufacturer (Transportation Group, Inc [TGI]) and the parent company (Bombardier). Disney cited that "the 12 trains Bombardier and TGI made for Disney World were not designed, manufactured, installed and delivered as promised" and that "Disney also alleges that the trains had to be substantially modified, at considerable and unplanned expense before they could be used." The article continues with Bombardier's argument, "Disney 'knew or should have known' that its power distribution system did not have adequate capacity for the operation of the new monorail trains, but Disney 'failed to disclose the fact' to the manufacturer'". (Vicki Vaughan, The Orlando Sentinel, 11 Jan 1991). Bombardier countersued for $160,000 plus interest, for money that Disney "wrongfully refused" to pay them for work done on the monorails. Information on the settlement of this lawsuit was not disclosed.
Other
miscellaneous notes:
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