Here is a vehicle to move a dinosaur safely, slowly, and comfortably from one location to another. The driver is fully enclosed and protected, just in case a dinosaur becomes agitated. In the rare case of emergency, the drivers’ compartment opens from the back – away from the dinosaur’s teeth.
I built this suspended monorail in four sections. First came the “upper tractor” – the wheel housing that drives the train along the rail. It took a lot of experimentation to figure out how to mount three sets of wheels in two planes – the one set that rides on top of the rail, and the sets on either side of the rail. Then there was even more experimentation to make it hold together with stability. Once I finally got all that solved, I wondered if I was going to be faced with the same problem I had with the Personal Railpod. In other words, would I have to construct something with an off-stud width? I was pleasantly surprised that the rail would be exactly six studs wide, and the upper tractor fit perfectly.
Train, head on
Train, from rear
Train, seen from the station
Next came the train itself. I knew that I wanted to mount a curved windshield upside-down, since the driver would have more need to see the ground below than the track above. I knew that I wouldn’t have enough identical pieces to make a true, bi-directional monorail. So, the idea here is that this is just one car of a train – a prototype. Another driver car can be connected to the back, and passenger cars can be connected between them, if needed. This part of the build actually turned out to be the most difficult. How should the driver’s section be built? How should the seats be arranged? What should the seats be built from? How do I fit it all together without it being so large as to be unwieldy? After some experimentation, I saw that my problem was scale. Once I abandoned the paradigm of building to minifigure scale, and I just built a monorail train, it all came together nicely. I thought the connection between the train and the upper tractor was going to be a problem to be worked out, but it wasn’t. One block supports the weight of the train very well.
Upper Tractor
Station, track side
Station, passenger side
Next came the track. Since it was a convenient six-stud width, the only real problem was having enough blocks. I would have liked the rail, and the train, to be higher off the ground, but I simply didn’t have enough pieces. It gets the point across, I think.
And so the train was built, and it fit on the rail securely, and I think it looks nice. The rail was solid, thanks to those arches, and well balanced. I would have liked the towers to be more solidly-colored, but I had the problem of having enough blocks. I was finished – or so I thought. Phillip said it needed a station. So, after trying several ways to build stairs and a wheelchair ramp (or elevator), I decided to build a simple, flat station, with the idea that it connects to a main building.
Standing on top of the rail can be dangerous
Yes, I like this suspended monorail a lot.
