Rumor New Monorails Coming Soon?

[eddie104]

Sure, they should be able to pick up an additional 10 bucks out of that.

You could be right, but, it isn't like Disney (especially in Orlando) to spend a lot of money on complete overhauls which sounds like that to me. To be fair, I don't have a clue what extent the trains are being overhauled. It might just be a coat of paint to look new. I just think with all the money they have been spending on other things, if they can get another 5 or 10 years out of the old fleet, they will do it. Maintenance is cheaper then buying a new fleet at today's prices.

You never know what Disney is planning especially if they feel they are a hazard.

 

[JoeCamel]

I believe that money would have to be spent on upkeep whether new trains are coming or not. As much as we rag on the monorails, their condition could still take quite a fall from grace if upkeep was throttled significantly.

It certainly doesn't seem they've made any capital improvements lately to the trains, only maintenance cost.

Ummmm, operating with the doors open and pieces falling off into guest areas??

 

[nace888]

Ummmm, operating with the doors open and pieces falling off into guest areas??

The "pieces falling off" was actually not a fall off, but a force of pressure. The bus bar was warped (from what I'd heard) and the transition was not smooth for the carbon shoes to pass over, it grabbed, and popped off. I believe I mentioned it being set up as a safety feature, and want to say that was confirmed.

As for the door, clearly the driver didn't know... They should have.

But I'm not making or validating excuses on the door issue.

 

[Goofyernmost]

The "pieces falling off" was actually not a fall off, but a force of pressure. The bus bar was warped (from what I'd heard) and the transition was not smooth for the carbon shoes to pass over, it grabbed, and popped off. I believe I mentioned it being set up as a safety feature, and want to say that was confirmed.

As for the door, clearly the driver didn't know... They should have.

But I'm not making or validating excuses on the door issue.

One doesn't need to make excuses for mechanical breakdowns. They just happen and they happen on a regular basis to just about everyone. Our personal cars break down, is that because of a lack of maintenance? Sometimes it is, but, mostly it just happens, parts wear out, sensors stop working and when you consider the numbers of miles on those things with only two reported one time non-eventful incidents the mere fact that we even bring it up is showing a lacking of maturity on our part because that is nothing short of a miracle. It will be easy to tell when something important happens because there will be very large headlines in every paper in the country.

 

[Robbiem]

I’ve worked on level access rail projects before and it can be quite tricky. There are two big things to consider the horizontal gap and the vertical step. Most trains sit higher above the platform and cover the gap so passengers step down to platform. On the London tube where this happens they have raised up the areas of the platform with a hump where there are wheelchair spaces which is slightly cut back from the end of the platform. This gives the step down for able bodied people and a smaller gap for people in wheelchairs. On one set of lines they tried lowering the train floor so it was level to most platforms, in order to do this the bottom of the train had to curve away from the platform to prevent it hitting it. This was fine in theory but where the platfrom had any sort of curve you end up with a big gap which created a lot of accidents as people didnt realise the bottom of the train wasnt in the same place as the eye level door.

The best network I’ve seen for access is Japan. Almost all the railways have level boarding and at some stations they even have escalators which can convert to carry a wheelchair

 

[nace888]

I’ve worked on level access rail projects before and it can be quite tricky. There are two big things to consider the horizontal gap and the vertical step. Most trains sit higher above the platform and cover the gap so passengers step down to platform. On the London tube where this happens they have raised up the areas of the platform with a hump where there are wheelchair spaces which is slightly cut back from the end of the platform. This gives the step down for able bodied people and a smaller gap for people in wheelchairs. On one set of lines they tried lowering the train floor so it was level to most platforms, in order to do this the bottom of the train had to curve away from the platform to prevent it hitting it. This was fine in theory but where the platfrom had any sort of curve you end up with a big gap which created a lot of accidents as people didnt realise the bottom of the train wasnt in the same place as the eye level door.

The best network I’ve seen for access is Japan. Almost all the railways have level boarding and at some stations they even have escalators which can convert to carry a wheelchair

Hey, I at least suggested a ramp that the train can carry in those cars. wouldn't have to be too heavy depending on material, and if created to the door right, can simply fall when the door opens, and get pushed back in when the door closes. That was my thought. I think like you say though, the curve is a big defining factor, whether it's a curved station or a curved train... I still think sliding doors can fix our flush platform issue.

All in all, the Innovia set is nice, but... there's gonna have to be a lot of tweaking for the new fleet if it were to be. Last rumor I heard was that the exterior of the Mark VIII was planned to look very similar to the Mark VI. The interior would look very different, but again, it's all hearsay. I have a hunch they'll attempt to go for the flush doors again, but if they do, the Innovia 200 would be an interesting one to do it on, since it was designed with exterior tracked doors.

 

[Cesar R M]

Yeah they did a good job with blending the sliding doors on the Vegas trains. I think the Mark VII's pop out and slide, maybe that's just the cab though?

For anyone who hasn't seen the Vegas system it's worth looking at. It's clean, efficient and very well designed. Puts the WDW system to shame sadly.



The platform is higher than the beam. If you're ever in a station and you look across to the other edge of the platform you can usually see the extra ~6 inches they added for the Mark VI trains. Also that's the reason for the small ramp when approaching the load area at the Contemporary.

Looks a lot like Vancouver's Skytrain metro system.

 

[NormC]

The ones on the Vegas innovia 200 are on a top and bottom track that just slide from side to side similar to the grocery store door. It doesn't make a body look flush, but it also doesn't look bad either.

Exactly. The Innovia 200 series would be the basis for new trains in WDW.

 

[Jonathan Wang]

welp just went through 20+ pages to catch up on this thread, I can only hope that disney did what they did back when they built WDW and used a different company to place an order that we just dont know about, likely chance is probably none tho.

Hopefully all the money they are putting into the current line is just to keep them going for 3-5 years max and then have some new ones ready by then. With that being said, the Innovia 200 looks pretty good in my opinion and it would be awesome if they could incorporate the entryway doors like they did in vegas instead of the current gates so it would give more room for standby loading.

 

[Rteetz]

welp just went through 20+ pages to catch up on this thread, I can only hope that disney did what they did back when they built WDW and used a different company to place an order that we just dont know about, likely chance is probably none tho.

That chance is none.

 

[nace888]

Exactly. The Innovia 200 series would be the basis for new trains in WDW.

Yes, however, I'd heard that the new trains wouldn't look like the Innovia 200, but closer to the Mark VI but in Mark VIII style.

 

[jpeden]

That chance is none.

Do you mean the chance for new trains is gone or that they aren’t built by Bombardier is gone?

 

[Rteetz]

Do you mean the chance for new trains is gone or that they aren’t built by Bombardier is gone?

New trains are still in the works. They just aren't going with a different company.

 

[jpeden]

New trains are still in the works. They just aren't going with a different company.

Good to know.

 

[matt9112]

The article say's they will order Innovia 300's. Those trains wouldn't fit on the WDW system so if that's part of the information then I would say it's outright false. Could just be the author making assumptions. In any case it shows the article was written with very little knowledge.

simply to play devils adovcate could they design it to fit the WDW beam and station size but use the overall style and arrangement and thus call it the 300s?

 

[s8film40]

simply to play devils adovcate could they design it to fit the WDW beam and station size but use the overall style and arrangement and thus call it the 300s?

The 300 is basically a scaled up 200. So I would think if you scale it back down you would pretty much end up with the same thing. The style and design are very similar with the difference being size. The big advantage for the 300 that differentiates it the most is the walkthrough design between cars. I suspect this was one of the big reasons they went bigger so it was just big enough to allow a small walkway around the wheel. I can’t imagine that working within the size constraints of the Mark VI/ Innovia 200 designs.

 

[Lensman]

The 300 is basically a scaled up 200. So I would think if you scale it back down you would pretty much end up with the same thing. The style and design are very similar with the difference being size. The big advantage for the 300 that differentiates it the most is the walkthrough design between cars. I suspect this was one of the big reasons they went bigger so it was just big enough to allow a small walkway around the wheel. I can’t imagine that working within the size constraints of the Mark VI/ Innovia 200 designs.

And how critical is the need for the walkway between the cars at WDW? I can see the clear benefit in the metropolitan transit case where in the mid-stations people get off of some cars and the ones waiting to board may be trying to get on the cars that are already full, but it seems to me that the big capacity constrained use case at WDW is the express monorail line and that has everyone getting off and then boarding an empty train, so people can distribute themselves pretty evenly along the platform.

Other than that the Innovia 300 does have more capacity due to being bigger but that's not really something that can be upgraded so easily. [Edited to add the following because the obvious needs to be restated over and over again: because of the constraints of the path through the Contemporary] OTOH, if they are going to go for a capacity upgrade I could see them adding cars if they decide to go for a level-loading design since they'll most likely have to upgrade the stations in that case. Maybe they'll spring for lengthening the stations in addition to raising the platforms? But that's something that we've already discussed earlier in the thread, I believe.

 

[JoeCamel]

And how critical is the need for the walkway between the cars at WDW? I can see the clear benefit in the metropolitan transit case where in the mid-stations people get off of some cars and the ones waiting to board may be trying to get on the cars that are already full, but it seems to me that the big capacity constrained use case at WDW is the express monorail line and that has everyone getting off and then boarding an empty train, so people can distribute themselves pretty evenly along the platform.

Other than that the Innovia 300 does have more capacity due to being bigger but that's not really something that can be upgraded so easily. OTOH, if they are going to go for a capacity upgrade I could see them adding cars if they decide to go for a level-loading design since they'll most likely have to upgrade the stations in that case. Maybe they'll spring for lengthening the stations in addition to raising the platforms? But that's something that we've already discussed earlier in the thread, I believe.

300 wont fit in the Contemporary

 

[Lensman]

300 wont fit in the Contemporary

That's what I meant when I said "not really something that can be upgraded so easily". The fact that the Contemporary constrains the size of the monorail has been said over and over and over again in this thread so I didn't think I needed to mention it again. Apparently I was wrong. Thanks for the tip.

Other than that the Innovia 300 does have more capacity due to being bigger but that's not really something that can be upgraded so easily. OTOH, if they are going to go for a capacity upgrade I could see them adding cars if they decide to go for a level-loading design since they'll most likely have to upgrade the stations in that case. Maybe they'll spring for lengthening the stations in addition to raising the platforms? But that's something that we've already discussed earlier in the thread, I believe.

But anyway, @JoeCamel, did you have any thoughts on my main question which is "How useful would the ability of passengers to move between cars be for the WDW use case?"

 

[s8film40]

And how critical is the need for the walkway between the cars at WDW? I can see the clear benefit in the metropolitan transit case where in the mid-stations people get off of some cars and the ones waiting to board may be trying to get on the cars that are already full, but it seems to me that the big capacity constrained use case at WDW is the express monorail line and that has everyone getting off and then boarding an empty train, so people can distribute themselves pretty evenly along the platform.

Other than that the Innovia 300 does have more capacity due to being bigger but that's not really something that can be upgraded so easily. OTOH, if they are going to go for a capacity upgrade I could see them adding cars if they decide to go for a level-loading design since they'll most likely have to upgrade the stations in that case. Maybe they'll spring for lengthening the stations in addition to raising the platforms? But that's something that we've already discussed earlier in the thread, I believe.

I think it’s something that would be nice but not hugely necessary. One of the advantages I could see is when loading, a lot of people don’t like to walk all the way down to the ends of the platform and block the isles. This way people could pile into the middle and still work their way down. Could also help for loading more last minute guests since the middle would even out more you could jump on even if it’s crowded and know that people will move down.

I think you could get the same benefit though from redesigning the stations. Especially in the case of the MK station. That station is horrible and especially so since they use it in reverse of the way it was designed and originally used. The unload platform just wasn’t designed for those type of crowds. I have no idea why someone hasn’t switched that back.