Designer Times
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As the Disneyland Mk III Monorail Project, which started in August 1965, continued its development thru to production in 1968, the forthcoming Walt Disney World development would need new Monorail transportation also. WDW was planned to have the Magic Kingdom placed some distance across a lake from the main parking lot. This meant that all entering guests would have to be transported across or around the lake. The main transport would be by Monorail with additional support from Trams and Ferry Boats.
The new Florida Monorail, the Mk IV, would have to carry way more passengers longer distances at greater speeds than the Disneyland Mk III Monorail. The WDW Monorail Beamway was to be a bigger wider beam with larger radius curves. We could take the Mk III and widen the car design while adding more length thus many more passengers......a growth version of the Mk III, which was about to start production for Disneyland. Thus there was no finish to the Mk III project and a start up for the Mk IV, just a continuous design and manufacturing project that would ultimately span a (6) year time frame.
The hot and humid Florida environment and the heavy local thunderstorms required that the Mk IV be totally enclosed and air conditioned, unlike the mild climate in Anaheim where the basic cars were open air. We had to design a water tight body and take special equipment precautions for running 600 volt electrical equipment high up on a concrete beamway with rubber tires, rather than steel wheels on grounded rails.
Since the bonded aluminum honeycomb panel concept worked so well on the Mk III, I used this idea for the entire body of the Mk IV. I selected flat tinted glass for the side windows and acrylic for the vast windshields. I also decided to make these Monorail trains look as slick as possible using flush rivets to assemble the honeycomb panels. A few years before, our Disney company private airplane stopped at an executive terminal in Kansas. A red carpet was rolled out to our airstair door. Just as I de-planed, a new white LearJet coasted to a stop next to us. This beauty was so slick and futuristic that I never forgot the feeling of "having arrived in style". I wanted our guests first visit to Walt Disney World to have this same experience......a sleek Monorail will glide into the station and whisk them off to The Magic Kingdom. Thus the Mk IV was going to have a giant one piece wraparound windshield, flush rivets, and be painted white just like the LearJet.
Many years later I met Shanda Lear, the daughter of Bill Lear, the father of the fabulous LearJet. I confessed to Shanda that I "stole" the front of her dads LearJet for my Monorail.....she was quite honored to hear this. In later years, Disneyland modernized their old 1968 Mk III chassis with a new Mk V body design which Imagineer George McGinnis patterned after the Florida Mk IV. And in the early 1990s, WDW replaced the Mk IV Monorail Trains with the new Bombardier designed and built Mk VI. Both of these new Monorail designs sport the original LearJet look and continue the "Buck Rogers landing skid" lower skirt design. Even the forthcoming new Las Vegas Monorail continues the old skirt styling.
Using the previous "dead sea scrolls" technique, I designed virtually every part, both major and minor with particular attention to the minutest detail. I was very fussy about the exact rivet patterns for the tiniest bracket or doubler in order to avoid future fatigue cracking. This was long before CAD computers came into use. I would draw full size local details by hand using pencil, drafting machine, and roll vellum paper. I didnt need to draw large scaled assemblies.....our drafters would build up these large layouts. Since I was using the XYZ coordinate system, I could calculate by trigonometry exactly where every piece was located in the car. Sort of a full size detail omitting all the boring continuous lines between details. Just figure out the important joints and leave the in between spans to others......saved me a ton of design time......never did complete a finished document, only detail layouts.
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Posted: 8/29/08