Comments on: New Russian Monorail RUNS IN TROUGH ON BIG SPHERES (Feb, 1934)

By: Firebrand38

Firebrand38 — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 20:38:22 +0000

Just like a joke (only not as funny)

By: Swooters

Swooters — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 20:26:55 +0000

Quite interesting design.

One can only wonder what a picture of Charlie Sheen is doing in that article, though.

By: Charlie

Charlie — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 20:17:51 +0000

Plus, it hardly seems like a monorail when your train rides IN the rail instead of on it.

By: Rick Auricchio

Rick Auricchio — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 20:15:21 +0000

I don’t understand the fascination with monorails. Why bother when conventional rails seem to work well?

By: Klopfer

Klopfer — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 23:12:26 +0000

One of the photos was used in another article about a Russian train (posted here on January 2nd), and there it was claimed that the train runs on steel balls. O_o

By: Robert Inkol

Robert Inkol — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 18:00:22 +0000

There seem to be some engineering issues here.

1. It can be easily seen that the tangential velocity at the edge of the spherical wheels is going to be less than at their centers (think what would happen if you approximated this geometry by stacking narrow disk like wheels of varying diameters). If the wheels contact the trough-like track over a large area, as appears to be the design intent, there will be considerable wear and drag caused by the resulting slippage.

2. The claim that keeping the center of gravity below the axle height is, at best, an oversimplification.

Robert

By: Stannous

Stannous — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 17:26:05 +0000

‘giant flattened spheres’?
Oh, you mean tires?