Walt Disney World’s monorail system is the backbone of the resort’s tranport network – but it was very, very difficult to build.
It’s no secret that Walt Disney was a big fan of monorail systems. When the first major expansion of Disneyland was completed in 1959, it included the Disneyland Monorail – the first daily operating monorail system in the Western Hemisphere.
Walt had seen a monorail system in aciton during a trip to Europe in 1958, prompting him to bring the concept stateside. But he had much bigger plans than simply installing the very limited run of track that was possible at Disneyland. In fact, he hoped to make the monorail the backbone of the transport system at Disney World, the new resort that was planned for Central Florida.
A monorail system would also have played an important role in Walt’s experimental city, EPCOT. It would have carried residents on longer journeys, to the Magic Kingdom theme park, to factories and research laboratories on an industrial park and to the airport on the fringes of the city.
In the end, Walt died in December 1966, almost five years before the newly-renamed Walt Disney World opened. EPCOT was never built (at least not its original guise as a living, working city) – but Walt’s successors did follow through on some of his ideas. One of those was the monorail, which was to play a major role in moving guests around the sprawling resort.
As it turned out, installing a monorail system in what was then a remote, lightly populated, swampy area of Florida was easier said than done. Disney faced numerous problems that nearly derailed the entire project…let’s take a look at some of them.
Problem 1: The concrete beams
Florida in the 1960s was, in some ways, quite different to the modern day state. It was lacking the extensive infrastructure that Walt Disney World would require, so the company was forced to build much of it itself, such an as enormous food distribution facility.
One other thing Florida lacked was a supplier capable of producing the gigantic beams that would be needed for the monorail. In fact, the nearest source turned out to be in Tacoma, Washington – more than 3,000 miles away. The company that produced them had previously worked on the monorail beams for the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair.
Problem 2: Getting the beams onto a train
The concrete beams that would make up the monorail’s circuit would each be some 26 inches wide and 85 to 110 feet long. Building them using solid concrete would have made them much too heavy to transport across the vast distances required.
Instead, the manufacturer constructed the beams with a lightweight polystyrene core. While, in theory, this made them easier to handle, they still weighed some 55 tons each. Three rail cars would be needed simply to carry one beam.
Problem 3: The route
When you’re attempting to cart a heavy, lengthy monorail beam across the country strapped onto three rail cars, it would be nice to have a reasonably straight route to work with. Of course, such as route didn’t exist between Washington and Florida.
To navigate the winding circuit, the flat-bed rail cars were fitted with swiveling pivots at each end to enable them to negotiate curves.
Problem 4: The accidents
The clever use of pivots ensured that most of the monorail beams arrived safely in Florida. Most of them.
Two trains derailed, landing in ditches. Not surprisingly, the freight bill alone was enormous – some $980,000, more than $6 million in today’s money.
Problem 5: The swamp
As well as getting the beams to Central Florida, Disney also had to contend with a major issue that would affect almost every project at Walt Disney World – the soggy ground. The resort was located on a sprawling, 25,000-plus-acre patch of swampland. Despite the construction of more than 50 miles of canals to control water levels, things were still a little damp.
To compensate for the lack of support from the ground itself for the super-heavy monorail beams, the columns that support the circuit were reinforced. The tapered concrete columns were placed approximately 110 feet apart, with sets of six being post-tensioned together to create a single, 600-foot-long structure.
A lasting success
Despite the difficulties building it, the Walt Disney World Monorail has proven itself to be a popular and genuinely useful element of the resort. It is now one of the world’s leading monorail systems, carrying more than 150,000 passengers per day across a combined total of 14.7 miles of beams.
