RC Monorail

Steam. Electricity. Electromagnetism. Fast. Very fast. Incredibly fast. The trains have evolved over the last 200 years, reaching an unbelievable velocity. Today’s maglevs easily run with 500 km/h and more. The secret behind this tremendous speed: linear magnets hidden in the track. The track, not the tracks. That’s another specialty of these trains: they don’t need two but one track, making them look futuristic. With their elevated track, no building or river causes problems – it can easily be crossed. We all love these trains connecting cities, but also within one town they are useful, e.g. as fast connection between the central station and the airport – just as here in Brick City.

There are two possibilities of making the monorail drive: either you use the Powered Up remote control or your smartphone. In the app, I assembled the blocks for two new functions: a speedometer for displaying how fast the monorail is, as well as an ability to stop when it reaches a red tile on the track (thanks to a colour sensor), afterwards it accelerates again (e.g. after having stopped at the station). Of course, also other colours could be used for new functions – what about a blue tile for speeding up?

The track is completely flexible, so you can adjust the curve radii completely as desired. Even the switches support this as you just need to put one end of the track on the right support. Furthermore, slopes are possible, so even mountains are no problem.

The modern train station features several details like an escalator, platform displays, ticket machines, station clocks and of course comfortable seats with space for the travellers’ luggage.

I’ve built the model with a bit less than 2500 parts and 5 minifigures (a businessman, a sleeping grandma with her granddaughter, a traveller and a station official). As this is a physically built model, obviously all parts are existing in the used colours.

Size and weight:

track: 144 x 75 x 16 studs, 642 g

train station: 63 x 25 x 33 studs, 1228 g

monorail: 50 x 8 x 11 studs, 494 g

complete model: 144 x 75 x 33 studs, 2363 g

I’m sorry for not being able to provide actual photos of the whole track as my white background is way too small. Therefore, I added a rendering showing the complete model.

Next Station: