Comments by "Philip Rayment" (@PJRayment) on "The Self Balancing Monorail" video.

I first read about this in a railway magazine published in about 1924, in an article about monorails which included the Patiala railway and the Listowel and Ballybunion railway, both of which still exist in museum or recreated forms. This video explained the technical aspects of the Brennan monorail in much greater detail than I had seen before. It couldn't run on existing tracks because it needed double-flanged wheels, which cannot go through normal points (US: switches) (and stub switches would also be problematic because of the frog). One possible practicable use for this could have been in military railways that needed to be constructed quickly; laying a single rail would be quicker than normal railways, and one of the supposed benefits was the ability to cross a gully simply by installing a cable across the gully, and running on that cable. The weight of the train does make me wonder how realistic that would be, however. Yet I have to wonder if something like this would be more practicable today, given modern, lightweight materials that could reduce a significant amount of the weight. And many passenger trains every carriage motorised, so every vehicle having the gyroscopes may not be out of the question. Or perhaps articulated vehicles could be used, where the gyroscopes hold two (or more?) carriages upright. But in the end, for most purposes, I guess it remains the case that it doesn't have a significant advantage over normal two-rail trains.
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@fcox7015 "besides, in a flat surface will behave well but what about a hill?" I wouldn't expect it to behave any worse than a conventional train. "i have always think that its weird that nature has not evolve a species that has natural flywheel built into it. i think birds have giros but i could be wrong tho" Evolutionist J. B. S. Haldane said that nature could never evolve a creature with wheels. I don't know of any flywheels, but all living things have wheels, in the form of motors, (bacterial flagella, ATP synthase), which is actually (like this monorail), clever design.
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@ricardoinacio "Expensive and doesn't have enough traction to cope with slopes." That would depend on the steepness of the slope. Yes, I guess it would have half the traction of a two-rail train, but there have been two-rail trains with gradients of up to 1 in 8.
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@PrathameshPatade "It's a great design, but it can't pull compartments behind it." I another comment, I suggest the possibility of some sort of articulated carriage that could have a gyroscope-equipped carriage hold up at least two carriages.
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@laneclaypool8005 "What happened when the train stopped moving?" They gyroscopes didn't stop. It just stood upright.
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@PEter-we6gm "Yea, but how to stop/start at trainstations." Propulsion was separate to the gyroscopes holding it upright.
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@NjeruThandi "Your script poorly employed use of racial stereotype as an attention catching device...King of Nigeria?" It's simply a fact that a lot of scams claiming to offer money originate(d) in Nigeria in particular. It's not to do with Africa more generally.
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