The members of The Monorail Society (TMS) make things happen! It's a well known saying that "one person can make a difference," and the following members of TMS are firm believers. Since our founding in 1989, they have contributed enormously to our organization. We sincerely thank them for their contributions to helping monorail get beyond the image of a 'just a ride.'

Listed in alphabetical order:

Dick Falkenbury...

Little did we know where Dick Falkenbury would take monorail when we first met him in the early 1990's. He had come to the conclusion that monorail would be the best choice for transit improvement in the City of Seattle. While coming to this conclusion isn't unusual in our circle of friends, what happened after that is now monorail history. Dick learned more about monorails from TMS, and we learned a great deal about the political process from Dick. He authored the now-famous successful Initiative 41, in which thousands of Seattle citizens signed petitions for monorail and backed it up with their votes. While the Seattle Monorail Project came to an abrupt and disheartening close in 2005, Dick continues to be in the forefront of the monorail movement. Beyond the enormous amount of work he has done for monorail in Seattle, Dick offers his expertise based on his Seattle experience to others attempting to do similar campaigns.

Joe Hamelin...

He says he's about the same age as the Seattle Alweg. That's appropriate, because Joe Hamelin has been a fan of the Seattle Alweg most of his life. "I grew up in Yakima, Washington, and most trips to the big city included a ride on the monorail. The monorail always seemed like the neatest thing since push button phones and is truly a geeks way of dealing with mass transit." Geeks? Sure, Joe's geekdom is a major reason The Monorail Society Website has been such a successful phenomenon. Joe is a network engineer/*nix system administrator and President of Nethead Incorporated. He found out about The Monorail Society "when Falk (Dick Falkenbury-see above) started making noise about monorails I started researching it on the web and joined TMS." When The Monorail Society was being challenged finding a suitable host for the website, Joe stepped up and graciously offered to host the site. Thanks to Joe's efforts, the world had reliable 24-hour access to gobs of monorail information from 2001 to 2007.
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David M. Ice...

Since he first saw the Disneyland monorail at the age of five, David has been fascinated by them. Fulfilling a lifetime dream, David traveled to Japan with fellow monorailists, and the result of his hard work on that trip is Monorails of Japan. In 2004, he continued to contribute to the cause with the spectacular Monorails of Malaysia DVD. In 2006 he produced Las Vegas Monorail. His fascination for monorails has transformed him from being one of many monorailists to that of being a monorailist-educator. His DVDs show that these systems have gone far beyond amusement park rides. David is a professional filmmaker with Oscar® and Emmy® nominations and is listed on the Internet Movie Database (David's IMDb profile). He worked for many years in Hollywood as a sound editor/designer and was responsible for the sound for many television shows (including the last 100 episodes of M*A*S*H) and over 65 feature films. He is also an accomplished Harpist and has performed with many orchestras, and regularly plays for symphony concerts, musicals, and private events. We are eternally grateful to David for sharing his professional skills and generously using his time to produce fantastic DVDs for TMS.
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Randy Lambertus...

Randy Lambertus has a passion for monorail, and one in particular. Since riding it at the New York World's Fair of 1964/1965, Randy has been on a quest to learn everything about the AMF Monorail. So much so that he has established the AMF Monorail Research Project. He has contributed greatly to The Monorail Society by researching this system and finding out a great deal more about it and other systems. Randy even went on a mission in France to find out about the efforts for monorail there. He became the first TMS member to visit the remains of the SAFEGE test train. The images he took on that trip can be found at the SAFEGE Monorail and Bertin Aerotrain Website (unavailable as of Jan. 2010). As an avid collector of any materials related to the subject, items he's found have filled in gaps in our knowledge of the history of monorails. In 2001, Randy also contributed financially so that TMS could acquire the George D. Roberts monorail papers collection. The Roberts collection contains invaluable historical documents and we thank Randy for helping preserve it for future use.
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Paul M. Newitt..

Paul M. Newitt has been an asset to The Monorail Society since he joined in 1990. Always willing to donate his time and talents, his ideas and work have help make TMS what it is today. One of his first major contributions was the redesign of Monorail Newsletter (discontinued in favor of our website in 1998). His design made the newsletter look professional for the first time. Part of that redesign resulted in the now-familiar look of the logo lettering of our name, visible at the top of every page of our website. That design was used for our first promotional flier, which was completely designed by Paul. A design graduate of U.C. Davis, his skills have been used in many other TMS projects as well. In 1994, he helped design, build and man our display for Expo Rail '94. The event took place at the convention center in Los Angeles. Never at a loss for ideas, Paul made excellent suggestions for improving TMS and the website. Not only that, he backed up his ideas up by developing them for us.
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Karl Parker...

Karl Parker offered his video production skills in 2000 in a way that has altered the image of monorail in many circles. An up-and-coming filmmaker, Karl took Kim Pedersen's video footage and script for a promotional video and turned it into a sleek production. Why not Monorail? was used everywhere to highlight the advantages of monorail over competing modes of transit, as well as just showing that transit monorails do exist beyond the theme park environment. The video shows monorail in communities such as Seattle, Washington and Pinellas County, Florida. Karl has also produced his own video on the subject by the name of My Own Private Monorail. In 2005, after a great five-year run, Why not Monorail? was retired from the Monorail Store in favor of newer DVD productions. However, we are pleased that Why not Monorail? is now available for all to view in our Video Pages.
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Dale O. Samuelson...

Dale Samuelson likes things that run on tracks. Although we are an organization devoted to a rather sedate type of train, his biggest track passion remains for the roller coaster. As a result of his friendship with the founder of TMS, he has been convinced of the monorail's value beyond the theme park environment. With his excellent photographic and editing skills, for many years he helped turn the Monorail Newsletter into what was considered by many to be a very professional publication by serving as TMS Editor. Editing sessions were fun in that they almost always turned in lengthy comedic discussions over the English language and it's use. While the newsletter has now been replaced by a website, he is still active in the direction of the organization. In 2015, Samuelson served as the Editor and Foreword writer of Kim A. Pedersen's book, Monorails: Trains of the Future-Now Arriving.
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David B. Simons Jr....

With years of Mark VI driving experience in Florida, David is not an uninformed fan of monorail. While most monorail drivers learn what they need to know to do the job, David went beyond the call of duty. When guests had questions about monorails, he was the one that would be rounded up to share his vast knowledge of Mark VI trains as well as that of other monorails. David joined TMS in 1993 and served as our South East Representative for several years, until accepting the post as the first TMS Vice President. He has made several journeys in the USA to study and experience different monorails. He is the author of several articles for The Monorail Society website, including several in the Novelty Monorail pages. His other interests include Civil War history and jeeps. David served as The Monorail Society's Vice President until 2000.
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Eric Smith....

Eric Smith has been a fan of monorails since his first trip on a Mark IV at Walt Disney World as a child. He is also a railfan and model railroader. As the owner of Northstar Computer Systems, Eric has been hosting web sites since 1996, exclusively on Windows-based servers. Northstar provided hosting to monorails.org prior to 2001. As The Monorail Society website (and Northstar) grew, Northstar once again became TMS's hosting provider in 2007. Eric and Northstar graciously donated space and bandwidth from 2007-2012. When he's not riding monorails, Eric has worked and volunteered as an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) for 10 years and is currently training as a paramedic.
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Teri-Lynn Wheeler...

Teri-Lynn Wheeler jumped into the fray of monorail promotion at full speed (P4 if you drive Mark V's). When TMS President Kim Pedersen told her about the possible development of rail systems in Orange County, California, Teri-Lynn immediately started making contacts and promoting monorail as the way to go. She worked with monorail backers in the Wilshire Center area of Los Angeles. Her college degree in Public Relations is proving to be a great benefit to TMS. Describing monorails, she tells us "I love them! I believe in them and their importance as a mode of true transit. I love to watch them, learn about them and mostly - I love to DRIVE them!" Teri-Lynn lives with her husband Ira and son Jason in Fountain Valley, California. Teri-Lynn served as Southern-California Representative until the representative program was disbanded in 2001 in favor of Campaign USA. Although the representative program ended years ago, we still appreciate the many contributions Teri-Lynn provided to TMS.
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