Designer Times
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I spent a lot of time on the interior trim, such as window reveals, seats, carpeting and such, to get a luxury look with no visible fasteners . Since I was doing the structural details AND all the trim, there was no classical fight between the engineers and the stylists. One portion of all of the Monorail designs that was impossible to draw completely on paper was the soft curvey shapes that blended the lower skirt to the end car nose body shape. The easiest way was to have the basic sheet aluminum parts formed with extra "selvedge" edge material to play with. The Martin-Marrieta shop would set these pieces up in place temporarily so I could walk all around looking from all angles as I began to mark where to trim off the excess aluminum giving the part its graceful outline. After several mark-and-trim sessions, I told the guys I was happy with the final result and they would duplicate this for all the rest of the trains. I dont think we ever did make engineering drawings of that final trim and fit......it was all eyeball stuff.
The Designer Times for August 14, 2002 story No. 28, Disneyland Mk III Monorail described in detail how we developed the Mk III. The reader should refer to this earlier story since both Monorails were developed by the same team using the same business practices.
The whole WDW Mk IV Monorail project would become literally a national effort. The beams were produced in Seattle by the Abam Company and shipped clear across America to Florida. Many of the chassis and body parts were manufactured in Los Angeles and Van Nuys, California. Electrical propulsion equipment was manufactured in Erie, Pennsylvania. All these components were shipped to the Martin-Marrieta plant in Orlando for final assembly into completed train sets. These were moved by truck to WDW just a few miles away from Martin-Marrieta.
As described in the the previous Mk III Monorail story, the Mk IV design program would be done using a clever business approach. Rather than have our Machine Shop drafters produce manufacturing drawings based on my design layouts, then have Machine Shop manager Roger Broggie negotiate vendor contracts, followed by Walt Disney Studio Purchasing Department administration, we set up a Project Office.
We hired Dave Gengenbach to manage the Mk III Monorail project. After much of the Mk III manufacturing was under way for Retlaw, Daves WDW Monorail project office was set up at MAPO. Dave would give my design layouts to the drafting group (just six guys), then issue requests for bids on batches of detail part drawings to a number of vendors. He would also negotiate with equipment suppliers for all the purchased materials and train equipment. He would act as a single point of bid price decision, purchase order administration, quality control inspection, and project scheduling......just one guy!
Disney placed their non-interfering trust in Dave, all the venders knew his industry reputation as a square shooter who knew every detail of the specialty manufacturing business. He only needed minimum typing assistance, so no large staff was needed. I could trust him to coordinate all the detail design trivia that I was going to dump into his lap. I made endless piles of design layouts for him, which he always referred to as "Gurrs dead sea scrolls".
Dave negotiated all the contracts from small batches of detail parts all the way to the very large final assembly work at Martin-Marrieta, where he also had a project office. Our (6) basic Monorail drafters would start on Mk IV engineering drawings as they finished their Mk III work. Even though Dave was splitting his time between Glendale and Orlando, the whole project moved very smoothly. By early 1971 we began to install complete Monorail Trains onto the beamway for extensive testing. We were running the beamway thru the Contemporary Hotel and the building structural engineers worried that wheel vibrations from the passing train might damage the building. Knowing that the Monorails would travel at 10 MPH thru the Hotel, they wanted a full speed test to record the vibrations. One day I drove the Monorail into the hotel at 40 mph while Dave operated the recording device. No vibrations......but Ill never forget how the entry opening in the Hotel squeezed right down on the front car as I sped thru the Hotel!
Those WDW Mk IV Monorails ran until the early 1990s, putting in 20 years of reliable service for our guests. Two retired Mk IV Monorails found their way to Las Vegas and are still running between the MGM Grand and the Ballys Hotels every day awaiting their ultimate replacement with the all new Bombardier Monorails scheduled for 2004. Not bad for a 1965 idea whose service life will have spanned four decades.
oOo
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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 January 8, 2003
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