greggerypeccary wrote Yesterday at 3:22pm:

That’s what the manufacturers say when they want to use 19 Century narrow gauge trains in a modern setting.
Monorail is a zip word that sells the product, like calling steam submarines ‘’ Nuclear Powered’’; pulls the wool over the sheeples eyes, and it succeeds; bet you think that 2026 is the 27th year of the current millennium.

The Sydney Monorail was unequivocally a real monorail because it operated on a single guideway beam, the defining feature of monorail technology.

Built by Swiss company Von Roll using their Type III (Mk III) straddle-beam design, the system featured rubber-tyred trains that straddled and encircled an elevated reinforced concrete beam approximately 70 cm wide by 80 cm high.

The vehicles ran on top-running drive wheels for propulsion, with side guide wheels for lateral stability and under-running stabilizing wheels to prevent derailment.

This setup allowed the entire train to travel along one continuous structural beam without dual rails, powered electrically at 500-525 V AC via contact rails, reaching operational speeds of up to 33 km/h.

Six seven-car trains, each capable of carrying around 170 passengers (48 seated), formed a functional 3.6 km urban loop serving eight stations, carrying millions over its 25-year lifespan from 1988 to 2013.

Industry sources, including transit reports and monorail databases, consistently classify it as a straddle-beam monorail, the most prevalent modern type worldwide (e.g., similar to systems in Tokyo, Las Vegas, and São Paulo).

Critics who claim it “wasn’t a real monorail” often rely on a narrow, purist definition favoring only suspended monorails—where vehicles hang below the rail, as in Germany’s Wuppertal Schwebebahn—dismissing straddle-beam designs as less “mono” due to the beam’s width and multi-surface contact (top, sides, and bottom).

However,

this view is subjective and not supported by mainstream transit engineering or organizations like the Monorail Society, which recognize both straddle and suspended types as legitimate monorails.

The Sydney system met every practical criterion: single-beam guidance, elevated separation from traffic, rubber-tired traction on a dedicated guideway, and urban passenger service.

Its shortcomings—low ridership, poor integration, high costs, and eventual replacement by light rail—stemmed from planning and operational choices, not from failing to qualify as a monorail.

In short, it was a genuine, if flawed, example of straddle-beam monorail technology in action.

Sir Eoin O Fada wrote Yesterday at 3:16pm:


So it's not a monorail because of what the depot looks like?