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Introduction
Of all the applications of steel wheels on steel rails, Monorails have perhaps drawn the least interest. Whatever their form, there always seem to be aspects of impracticality. The Wuppertaler Schwebebahn succeeded by virtue of straddling a creek and using its route as a right of way, a situation not easy to duplicate. The Seattle-Disney-Tokyo monorails require elevated structures of immense cost and have a huge footprint on the ground. Their mechanical requirements for switching cars are exceeded in complexity only by those for cog railroads. The Listowel and Ballybunion in Ireland, built to the Lartigue system, was in effect a fence across the landscape with every road crossing requiring a drawbridge over it. One of the very few which carried freight, it gave new meaning to the idea of a balanced freight traffic. It too required a goodly amount of machinery to switch from one track to another.
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Into Obscurity
Whether it was the time or the place I do not know, but perhaps the two together conspired to bury this unique little line in the dust of time. I have found little more than brief published mentions of it and some of those were obviously mistaken conjecture. It was so different from other railways and indeed from other monorails that it was probably easier to dismiss it than to understand it. And yet, from what I can learn of it, it was effective, efficient, and exactly what the situation called for.
The PSMT was begun in 1907. Within a few years the advent of trucks had the same effect on this line as it did on so many others. In 1927 the line was closed and here again it became unique. While most abandoned rail equipment is soon fed to the scrappers torch and furnace, the PSMT's equipment was simply walked away from. For 35 years it rested where it was left. If it were not for a Mr. Mike Satow, a historian of things railroady in India, who discoverd the remains in 1962, it would have disappeared from memory by now and so this page is dedicated to him. Largely due to him, one engine was restored to full working order by the Northern Railway Workshops at Amritsar. They also reconstructed the Chief Engineer's private inspection car on an old underframe and the two were placed as an operating display at the National Railway Museum of India.
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