Riding the Seattle Center Monorail

step inside Seattle's time machine and see why we paid $7 for a 4minute [Applause] [Music] ride welcome to Seattle Washington back in May of 2023 Lindsay and I visited Seattle for the first time and we loved it besides spending time with great people we enjoyed walking through the different neighborhoods and of course seeing some of the touristy [Music] sites [Applause] [Music] underneath the market is the infamous Gum Wall I'm not going to lie all that pre-wed gum made me feel a little queasy [Music] but that didn't stop us from swinging by Target and buying a pack so we could add our own contributions to the Wall located on the Puget Sound with water and mountains surrounding you on all sides the views in Seattle are beautiful and one of the best ways to take in these views is from the water the Puget Sound is crisscrossed by dozens of fairy routes some even traveling internationally to Canada we decided to go to West Seattle on a King County Water Taxi this is probably the shortest distance you could Sail Out of Seattle but since we only had limited time to explore Seattle this fast and frequent Water Taxi was the best choice for us what are the seats like they're so comfy really really they are really comfortable inside there are rows of comfortable seats fitted with different amenities such as power sockets however it was a beautiful day and there was nowhere we'd rather be than outside admiring the [Music] skyline them in sight and yell man overbo a oneway on the Seattle water taxi cost us $5 per person just like sailing on the Puget Sound is something you really have to do when you visit Seattle another must ride is the Seattle Center monal Seattle is one of the few places in the United States that that has a monal and I hope this video convinces you that it's more than worth a ride the Seattle Center monal dates back to 1962 it travels the .9 Mi or 1.4 km between the Westlake Center mall and the Seattle Center West Lake Center is closer to downtown Seattle and to get there we took a ride on Seattle's Link light rail make sure to check out a review of that train by clicking the link above and if you enjoy this video please subscribe to trains are awesome now you can actually transfer to the monreal straight from the link station so I'm going to show you how to do that and then we're going to get on the monal you can access the monreal from the light rail by elevator or you can take the stairs like we did either way once you reach the top you are right by the monreal platform which makes it super [Music] convenient a ticket is needed to pass through the fair Gates an adult roundtrip ticket costs 7 $ which yes that is one of the steepest prices I've ever paid for such a short distance but you really should treat the monreal as an attraction a ridable piece of history and that justified the cost at least to me Westlake station has just one side platform but there are two tracks so how do you board a train if it arrives on the outer track well there are these retractable bridges that push out towards the train that you can cross Here Comes our train now [Music] is this monoral train was built in the 1960s and I love the Retro futuristic interior design the big Windows which extend to the ceiling make the train feel very spacious the seats are not laid out in your traditional configuration almost anywhere you sit you get a good view of what's outside we made it on the Seattle Center monal this thing is cool as we begin our super short journey to Seattle Center let's talk about the history of this train on the way back we'll talk about how it works Believe It or Not throughout the early 20th century there were multiple proposals to build a monreal in Seattle none ever made it until the late 1950s when Seattle was planning to host the Century 21 [Music] Exposition welcome to Seattle Center mon please take a seat or hold on to the handil thank you for your cooperation and enjoy the ride Century 21 was a World's fair that lasted for 6 months in 1962 and the fair permanently altered Seattle's Urban landscape the famous space needle for example was built for Century 21 in less than 8 months the monoral was built with similar haste for similar reasons the city wanted a monal to connect the fairgrounds with downtown and listen to the proposals of several different manufacturers initially they went with Lockheed but after the city refused to pay for it that plan was shot down that's where German company alok stepped in fresh from building the monreal at Disneyland alok offered to build the entire thing on their own dime the investment would be recovered from fairs among other things furthermore once the investment had been recovered alw would transfer ownership of the monreal to the city so construction began in March of 1961 68 columns were built and the rails laid on top of them the trains themselves were manufact factured in Germany and shipped over exactly a year later in March of 1962 the monreal opened today the line continues to operate daily a private company known as Seattle monreal Services operates the line the monreal saw one major change in the 1980s when the original Westlake terminal was demolished the city wanted to build a park on the site so the Montreal was rerouted to a newly built terminal integrated into the West Lake Mall over the years there were efforts to expand the monreal in to a full-fledged transit system serving the region but as you can see those plans never materialized today the Montreal remains a Transit odity the top speed of the monal is around 45 mph or 70 kmph though that used to be higher Seattle Center Station this is our one and only stop please make sure you have all of your belongings and watch your step as you exit through the doors on the right side of the train though the train pick up electric power from the rail interestingly for about half of the journey they just Coast after 2 minutes we've arrived at Seattle Center home of the 1962 World's [Music] Fair well that might have been the most expensive 2-minute ride I've ever made but was it worth it it was pretty fun yeah it was prettyy fun it was [Music] fast what's that oh that's cool that's a cool shirt here at Seattle Center you can visit multiple attractions like the Space Needle Chuli Garden in glass the international Fountain and the Pacific Science Center we didn't go up the Space Needle but we did browse to their gift shop laughing at the different things that were on sale ooh they have a space needle moldarama yeah it's so Orange [Music] that one was [Music] hard [Music] now let's head back to West Lake and we'll talk about how the monoral works the word monoral means only one rail the prefix mono coming from the Greek word meaning only one or single and yeah rather than the two rails are train normally runs on a monil uses only one there are multiple types of monals in the world some are suspended from a rail While others rest on top of one the Seattle Center monal is a straddle beam monal the trains straddle a thick concrete Rail and they Propel themselves forward using multiple rubber tires rubber tires on the side help stabilize and guide the [Music] Train the Seattle Center Montreal has two aluminum cars the blue train and the Red Train both built by awok they were built in 1962 and yes these are still the original trains we are riding the same trains as the people visiting the fair over 60 years ago so straddle beam monals are probably the most common type of monal in the world in some cases the lines form important Transit corridors and the tracks come with all sorts of complicated switches and such not here though in fact the Seattle Center monal's operations are almost hilariously simple red and blue both have their own tracks they stay on these tracks never switching over to the other they can shuttle back and forth between the two stations independently of each other all maintenance of the trains takes place at Seattle Center Station if you look under the platforms you'll see the spaces where Crews can Tinker on the trains from [Music] below this makes it one of the few transit systems worldwide where passengers can literally ride every inch a [Music] track welcome to Seattle Center moning please take a seat or hold on to the handil thank you for your cooperation and enjoy the ride there is one tiny caveat however despite the two tracks never merging there is one spot where trains do get in the way of each other the situation at West Lake Center is not as simple as the rest the two tracks actually come closer together to form a layout known as Gauntlet tracks the tracks are so close together that if blue was still in the station when red came in uh-oh and that's exactly what happened in November of 2005 when the blue train crashed into the Red Train both trains were pretty beat up and service did not resume until August 2006 one thing that I found interesting is that when the trains were reconstructed following that accident it was the Seattle Opera that built the doors for the trains ordering the doors from the manufacturer in Europe would have taken many more months but the props team at the Opera was happy to help out [Music] so that was the Seattle Center monal really it's like stepping into a double time machine not only did we enjoy a ride in a piece of preserved history but we got to take a look at what people back then thought the future would look like maybe I should name this video Back to the Future I wonder if that title has been taken yet oh anyways thanks for watching today next week the final episode in our Amtrak Across America Series where we ride the famous Empire Builder from Seattle to Chicago in coach you don't want to miss this subscribe to trains are awesome and we'll see you next [Music] time

Channel: Trains Are Awesome

Views: 14,523

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Id: A4JY66BACYA

Length: 13min 58sec (838 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 20 2024