Lartigue Monorail

rdf:langString Lartigue Monorail

rdf:langString The Lartigue Monorail system was developed by the French engineer Charles Lartigue (1834–1907). He further developed a horse drawn monorail system, which had been invented by Henry Robinson Palmer in 1821. Lartigue had seen camels in Algeria carrying heavy loads balanced in panniers on their backs. This inspired him to design a new type of railway. Instead of the conventional two parallel rails on the ground, it had a single rail sitting above the sand and held at waist height on A-shaped trestles. The carriages sat astride the trestles like panniers. A line 17 km (11 mi) long was built in 1895 between Feurs and Panissières, in the French département of Loire. However this line never opened after it failed certification testing in both 1895 and 1896. The track and equipment were scrapped in 1902. The most famous Lartigue railway was the Listowel and Ballybunion Railway in Ireland which ran for 36 years from 1888. By 1881 Lartigue had also built a 90 km (56 mi) monorail to transport esparto grass across the Algerian desert, with mules pulling trains of panniers that straddled the elevated rail. However the Lartigue system as built was not truly a monorail, since it was necessary to add two further rails, one on each side, lower down the A frames. These did not carry any weight, but unpowered stabilising wheels fitted to all the engines and wagons contacted these extra rails to prevent the vehicles from overbalancing.