Another Gadgetbahnen Bites the Dust – Las Vegas Monorail Files for Bankruptcy

This news is not surprising and well illustrates the nonsense pandered by the light-metro lobby that grade separated, automatic transit systems themselves attract ridership. Monorails are in fact proprietary light-metros and once one invest with monorail, it is stuck with both monorail and the supplier, which is very bad for future transit planning, with Vancouver […]

The atmospheric railway, the original gadgetbahnen – With appologies to I. K. Brunel

The atmospheric railway can be said to be the first ‘gadgetbahnen’ as it was the first attempt to replace regular railway locomotives with atmospheric trains. On paper, the atmospheric railway was a sure winner but in revenue service a failure. What surprises myself is that this complicated transit mode ever worked at all, as the […]