ROMAG
ROMAG was a
ROMAG was developed from a wheeled system known as Monocab, originally designed by Edward Haltom and built to the extent of a test track by Vero Inc. in 1969. Rohr bought the design from Vero and converted it to the ROMAG, opening their own test track at their Chula Vista, California, plants in 1971. The Vero test system was later used as a display unit at Transpo '72.
ROMAG was considered for use in
History
Monocab
Monocab is one of the earliest PRT designs, dating from 1953. It was originally developed by Edward Haltom who was studying monorail systems. Haltom noticed that the time to start and stop a conventional large monorail train, like those of the Wuppertal Schwebebahn, meant that a single line could only support between 20 and 40 vehicles an hour. In order to get reasonable passenger movements on such a system, the trains had to be large enough to carry hundreds of passengers (see headway for a general discussion). This, in turn, demanded large guideways that could support the weight of these large vehicles, driving up capital costs to the point where he considered them unattractive.[1]
Haltom turned his attention to developing a system that could operate with shorter timings, thereby allowing the individual cars to be smaller while preserving the same overall route capacity. Smaller cars would mean less weight at any given point, which meant smaller and less expensive guideways. To eliminate the backup at stations, the system used "offline" stations that allowed the mainline traffic to bypass the stopped vehicles. He designed the Monocab system using six-passenger cars suspended on wheels from an overhead guideway. Like most suspended systems, it suffered from the problem of difficult switching arrangements; since the car rode on a rail, switching from one path to another required the rail to be moved, a slow process that limited the possible headways.[1]
Vero and Rohr
In the 1960s, Haltom sold his ideas to Vero, Inc. of Garland, Texas. Vero developed a new switching system with no moving parts, and started development of a test track at their headquarters, which opened in 1969.[1]
Vero's test track opened shortly after the publication of the highly influential
Many aviation companies attempted to rapidly diversify, and a number started mass transit programs as a way of doing so. One such company was
ROMAG
Unhappy with the original design, Rohr decided to make a decidedly more "
Two LIMs were used, one on either side of the vehicle, arranged in a unique fashion that acted as both the motors and lift systems.[2] The contact-less suspension would be smooth riding and silent, major considerations for operations close to houses in an urban environment. As the system did not depend on physical contact for traction, it would operate with equal effectiveness when covered with rain or snow, and could climb steeper grades and turn sharper corners.
They developed different versions of the vehicle that could run over or under a single rail, allowing bi-directional travel on a single guideway. This reduces the trackage, otherwise considered an eyesore. The new design first ran on 6 March 1971, and a test track was set up at Rohr's Chula Vista, California plants, consisting of a loop of bottom-running suspension track and a separate grade-level top-running track and one offline station.[1]
Sales efforts
Rohr bid on a variety of PRT contracts in the U.S. and Canada. In Canada it was one of over a dozen entries in the
The ROMAG was one of four major PRT entries demonstrated at the
Notes
Bibliography
- John Edward Anderson, "Some Lessons from the History of Personal Rapid Transit", 4 August 1996
- Edmund Rydell, "The Transportation Renaissance: The Personal Rapid Transit Solution", Xlibris Corporation, 2001[self-published source?]
- Paul Wahl, "Personal Rapid Transit", Popular Science, November 1971
- David Scott and John Free, "Maglev: How they're Getting Trains off the Ground", Popular Science, December 1973 p. 95
- ISBN 1-55002-292-X
- Advanced Group Rapid Transit Project Advisory Panel (Panel), "Impact of Advanced Group Rapid Transit Technology", NTIS #PB80-153323, January 1980