(via
Wikimedia Commons)
The Boynton Bicycle Railway, operated between 1892 and 1894 on Coney Island.
The inventor, M. E. Boynton claimed that a speed of one hundred miles an hour can be obtained with this system. The car was fitted to seat 108 people, according to
Science Magazine, October 18, 1889.
Later these trains were replaced with electric cars:
(via
Illiana Garden Railway Society, Arrts)
The Chase-Kirchner aerodromic system of transportation, with some wings, a concept from The Coming Railroad, an 1894 book written by George Nation Chase and Henry William Kirchner.
The wind-powered system with electric engines which could reach the speed of 125 mph was never built.
(via
Catskill Archive and The Coming Railroad, 1894/California Digital Library/Internet Archive)
Brennan's monorail, a system invented by Louis Philip Brennan CB, patented in 1903.
After two small demonstration models, (a 2ft 6 in by 12 inch one in 1903 and a 6 ft by 1 ft 6 in one in the next year) Brennan built the first working railcar in 1909, that could carry 32 people around the factory. The model had a 20 hp petrol engine and could reach the speed of 22 mph (35 kmh). It used a pneumatic servo and electric transmission. The system was used on the Japan-British Exhibition in London, 1910 where it carried 50 people at a time around a track.
(via
Wikimedia Commons and Tropical Press Agency/Getty Images)
"Fawkes' Folly," an experimental monorail car developed by J.W. Fawkes in Burbank, California, 1910
The idea never found backers—but if it had, the public might be enjoying
futuristic monorail travel through the air between Burbank and downtown. In 1910 inventor J.W. Fawkes built a propellor-driven aerial trolley that he claimed would haul passengers at speeds up to 60 miles per hour. To demonstrate, he hung a quarter-mile-long overhead track in his Burbank apricot orchard and invited passengers aboard. Dubbed the Aerial Swallow, the trolley was about 40 feet long and powered by a Frankline air-cooled engine, which turned the propeller. But the prototype topped out at three miles per hour, and investors kept their hands in their pockets.
(via
University Of Southern California and Retrofuture)
The experimental high-speed railcar with an aircraft engine named Aerowagon, invented by the Latvian-born Valerian Abakovsky, constructed in 1917.
Only one prototype was built. Four years after its completion a group of communists took it to test it between Moscow and Tula. On the return route to Moscow the machine derailed,
killing five people and the inventor on board.
(via
Lord K and Wikimedia Commons)
The German Schienenzeppelin (means Rail Zeppelin), the prop-driven V12 locomotive, developed by Franz Kruckenberg in 1929.
The
Schienenzeppelin was powered by a 46-liter BMW V12 engine and a massive propeller, which helped to reach the unbelievable 143 mph per hour (230.2 kmh) in the summer of 1931. Only one prototype was built, which was dismantled in 1939.
(via
Wikimedia Commons/German Federal Archives) onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Incredibly Strange Railway Systems