![]() |
![]() |
Novelty Monorails - Riverside Park Imagine a monorail system with no switches to fail; no spurline
adding to construction costs; no shop area full of pesky high
paid union maintenance personnel; no temperamental anti-collision
system; and no wasteful refurbishing of the vehicles every few
years. 'Sounds like a dream come true for a cost conscious operator,
right? While switches are more dependable than they're given credit
for, and anti-collision systems probably save more money than
they cost (think of all those costly lawsuits that crop up whenever
a transit vehicle strikes anything else, right light railers?),
and sprucing up a vehicle's appearance can be done easily and
lucratively with graphic advertising, the system in this installment
of Novelty Monorails doesn't deal with any of these cost factors
because of the fact that there is only one train running on a
closed loop. No need for a shop or spur, let alone a switch. The
station can serve as a work platform easily enough. Maintenance
personnel are freed up to keep other amusement rides running as
well. Train protection systems are not needed since there are
no other trains to hit, and at the low speeds that Universal Design
Limited monorails operate at, even the birds on the guideway can
move out of the way in time to avoid being hit. But when it comes
to refurbishing vehicles, Riverside Park is either spending all
of that budget on their excellent roller coaster, the Riverside
Cyclone, or they, like the fashion industry, are doing a retro
thing. [In fact, the most money spent on this system since its
installation was probably for its demolition.]
[Soon after I wrote this story, Riverside Park made their monorail a lot more like a lot of other UDL monorails; they removed it. Now it resides on the list with the HemisFair monorail, the Wildwoods by the Sea monorail, the Atlantic City Million Dollar Pier monorail, the green train at Philadelphia Zoo's Safari monorail, and the red and white trains from Dutch Wonderland: the list of hard-to-find monorails by UDL.] |