User:Chris j wood/sandbox/Merry Hill Monorail

Merry Hill Monorail

(1991–1996)

					Round Oak (South Staffordshire line) - Proposed Metro link
					Waterfront West (planned extension)
					Dudley Canal N° 1.
					Waterfront East
					Maintenance Depot
					Central Station
					Times Square (for Merry Hill bus station)
					Boulevard

The Merry Hill Monorail was an elevated monorail that operated at the Merry Hill Shopping Centre in Brierley Hill near Dudley in England. The line opened was opened in June 1991, but closed in 1996 as a result of a combination of technical problems and safety concerns (especially the difficulty of evacuation), exacerbated by a dispute between the owners of Merry Hill and The Waterfront which at this time were owned separately. The infrastructure was later removed, leaving only one disused monorail station and part of the old railings visible—on top of the Marks and Spencer store roof.

The monorail cost £22,000,000 to build, the construction work taking place along with the final phase of the shopping complex in 1988/89, but due to health and safety concerns it did not open until 19 months after the centre was complete.

There were to be five stations, with the system extending over the canal and terminating close to the site of the former Round Oak railway station where an interchange with a West Midlands Metro extension was proposed. However, only the first four stations were completed.

The system was officially opened on 1 June 1991. The actual public opening was delayed while Her Majesty's Railway Inspectorate investigated evacuation procedures. After operating for a short while, the monorail was temporarily closed again in 1992,^[1] but ran sporadically until 1996.^[2]

After the system was put up for sale in 1996,^[1] the trains and track were transferred in 2001 to the Oasis Shopping Centre, in Broadbeach, Queensland, Australia, to enable expansion of its own monorail system.

At the end of Monorail service, a "monorail replacement bus" service operated between the UCI Cinema and The Waterfront car parks. This service utilised two Travel Merry Hill owned MCW Metrobuses.

References

^ ^a ^b "Portsmouth's Monorail - Privately Financed". Fact Sheet No 128. Light Rail Transit Association - UK Development Group. November 2001. Archived from the original on 5 July 2008. Retrieved 9 October 2008. "Merry Hill train terror" was the headline as 20 shoppers waited to be rescued from the monorail jammed 50 feet above ground. [..] this monorail, Von Roll Mark III, was opened on 1 June 1991 at a cost of GBP22m. With its claim of 70 standing passengers per train, a maximum flow of 1800 passengers per hour per direction [..] opening of the monorail was delayed [..] In 1992 the line closed for essential maintenance and in 1996 was reported as being up for sale.
^ Williams, Andy (2005). "Andy Williams railway photos - Miscellaneous". Archived from the original on 9 May 2008. Retrieved 9 October 2008. [..] running over what [..] is called a rotary switch. [..] the south end of the line was double-tracked [and] left-hand running was the normal practise. The monorail was operational from 1991 to 1996, when it succumbed to a mixture of technical and safety issues. [..] I seem to recall that the monorail wasn't always operating, [..] it didn't really go anybear useful, and you had to pay to ride it. [..] This monorail was a Von Roll system. It had been out of use for five years when it was dismantled in 2001. The equipment was sold to the operators of the Broadbeach system in Australia [..] there's now little or no evidence that a monorail ever existed

External links

[lrta-128-1] "Portsmouth's Monorail - Privately Financed". Fact Sheet No 128. Light Rail Transit Association - UK Development Group. November 2001. Archived from the original on 5 July 2008. Retrieved 9 October 2008. "Merry Hill train terror" was the headline as 20 shoppers waited to be rescued from the monorail jammed 50 feet above ground. [..] this monorail, Von Roll Mark III, was opened on 1 June 1991 at a cost of GBP22m. With its claim of 70 standing passengers per train, a maximum flow of 1800 passengers per hour per direction [..] opening of the monorail was delayed [..] In 1992 the line closed for essential maintenance and in 1996 was reported as being up for sale.

[williams-2] Williams, Andy (2005). "Andy Williams railway photos - Miscellaneous". Archived from the original on 9 May 2008. Retrieved 9 October 2008. [..] running over what [..] is called a rotary switch. [..] the south end of the line was double-tracked [and] left-hand running was the normal practise. The monorail was operational from 1991 to 1996, when it succumbed to a mixture of technical and safety issues. [..] I seem to recall that the monorail wasn't always operating, [..] it didn't really go anybear useful, and you had to pay to ride it. [..] This monorail was a Von Roll system. It had been out of use for five years when it was dismantled in 2001. The equipment was sold to the operators of the Broadbeach system in Australia [..] there's now little or no evidence that a monorail ever existed

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