Designer Times
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The original 1959 Disneyland Monorail Trains were steadily improved during their first five years of service. Maybe improvement is not the right word.....more like fix the stuff that was not working very well. By August 1964 I had concluded that my original mechanical wheel suspension design was never going to get fixed. I realized that the design had a faulty configuration and that we should consider building an all-new train. This situation was soon to put me in hot water to the point that WED Enterprises ultimately sought outside consultation for the re-design program.
We bought an AR-240 Strong Motion Accelerograph Recorder, used to measure earthquakes, to record the trains vibrations as it moved along the Monorail beamway. There was a peculiar interaction between the beamway and the wheel bogie assembly that produced severe longitudinal forces on the train cars. When I showed the first recordings to the earthquake experts, they said I had recorded a pretty nasty earthquake. But I soon pinned down what was wrong, and set out to find the fix. My original bogie design had a dynamic characteristic we called "pitch couple" that caused excessive structural shake thru out the four-car train. This was also the result of a fairly rough beamway.
I convinced Disneyland"s Chief Engineer, John Wise, designer of the beamway, to start a beam grinding and filling operation to smooth out the roughest spots. This program lasted a year or so and made a vast improvement on ride quality. I began a series of design sketches to find a new Monorail wheel suspension arrangement that would eliminate the longitudinal shaking. My main conclusion was that the entire train must be tight-coupled car to car so that the complete train behaves as one mass.
About the time I thought I was making some re-design progress, a new guy shows up to help me. WED had hired a consultant, Dick Scherer, from Lockheed"s famed Skunk Works to come up with an alternate design. Some of our drafters were told to stay a couple of extra hours every night (without pay) to draw up the consultant"s designs. They were to also assist the consultant"s two engineers who also worked in the evening (with pay). Needless to say, a war situation had developed and I realized WED had no confidence in the path I had taken.
During much of 1965, we were all designing, building, and testing parts on a test car that was towed at night behind one of the existing Monorails. This long experimental program seemed endless as many of us had to ride the test car on the graveyard shift at Disneyland night after night. Poor Ken Kohler, the Disneyland Monorail Operations Manager had to work during the daytime Disneyland operating hours, then help us in the midnight hours. We also researched materials, tires, and built various bits of ground test apparatus.
Dick and I eventually became near enemies as our philosophical approaches were very different. I was a former car stylist, not a licensed engineer, Dick was a fearless scientist who reveled in exploration (on Disney"s nickel). One night we were riding on the test car recording ride forces. Dick reached out with his hand to smooth the motion of a test part so the recording would look better. That did it. The next day at a major executive meeting where we were to show our latest results, the smoothed recording was presented. When I related how the recording was altered, Dick was about to give me a mighty whack with his pointing stick.....right in front of all the Disney VP"s. NOW THAT REALLY DID IT.
I was sent to another building to work on other projects, my drafters were to work with Dick and his two very sharp guys. I was not to speak to them. After a few more months went by, The program was halted so that yet another consulting company could review the whole project to date. Dick had a lot of designs to review and I submitted the latest in my series of "secret" re-designs. It turned out that Kaiser Engineers reviewed both designs and gave their conclusions to WED, Dick, and I at the same hour and day. They said that the Lockheed design with 99% of the budget had no end in sight, and that my secret design, "the purple X", with 1% of budget might be the answer. Calm returned and WED set out to develop the second generation Disneyland Monorail, the MK III.
I never forgot Dick Scherer. He was far out and fearless. He once showed me his 1961 Chevy Greenbrier after he removed the small six cylinder rear engine and replaced it with a big Buick V8 mounted amidship. No room for anything else inside, but it sure had power. Years later, Dick did his part for America. When Lockheed"s Skunk Works was developing the first Stealth Fighter, the F-117A, their radar avoidance guru had come up with the shape theory that would be totally invisible......all flat panels. Guess who took that theory and was first to configure an airplane to fit the theory? Dick Scherer. Yep.....I knew him when.
oOo
Next month: Disneyland MK III Monorail
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-- Bob Gurr
Bob Gurr began working with Disney in 1954. He retired in 1981 but occassionally consults for the Company. Since Disney he's worked on the sinking ship at Las Vegas' Treasure Island, Universal Studios' King Kong, Godzilla for the film by the same name and much more. Among his proudest accomplishments he lists "making Walt tickled pink that some of the things he wanted to build actually worked. You could tell how proud he was when he would show off things to his friends and the press. Lincoln and the Monorail were two big ones for him."
Designer Times is normally posted the second Wednesday of each month.
The opinions expressed by Bob Gurr, and all of our columnists, do not necessarily represent the feelings of LaughingPlace.com or any of its employees or advertisers. All speculation and rumors about the future of Disneyland and the Walt Disney Company are just that - speculation and rumors - and should be treated as such.
-- Posted July 11, 2002
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