radvfx

I was seven-years-old living in Houston's new Westbury Subdivsion on Hillcroft Avenue in 1962. On the way to church each Sunday(a Presbyterian Church as I recall), our car would pass the two monorail cars in dis-repair overgrown by weeds with cracked windows sitting in front of what I remember to be some kind of tin-roofed warehouse. There were a lot of other pieces of rusty metal lying in that yard as well (un-identifiable to my memory). I recall there was a reason we would stop sometimes and sometimes we would just pass by; perhaps a stoplight or railroad crossing was there? But as we continued along the road, a large single-rail concrete structure that was obviously a demonstration track rose on the other side of the road as we drove by. If the current Google maps serve my memory well, I recall the structure with the two monorail cars were on the north-east corner of Fondren and Main. If we were travelling on Fondren, going north away from Westbury, then the rails would have been on the western side of Fondron, north of Main. Hillcroft didn't go through to Main at the time. It was a two-lane road next to one of the many open drainage ditches that ended in a big field for cattle at one house south of Densmore, my house. I, too, was attending Andy Andreson Elementary, and my older brother and sister went to Westbury High. I believe the rail was a loop. It could have been an out-and-back single rail, but the distinctive feature I do recall is that the rail closest to the tin-roofed warehouse only rose a few feet from the ground. After about one to two hundred feet it had a gentle slope that took the rail up to about twenty feet off the ground. Then, if I recall, it went in an out-and-back loop and sloped back down to the lower part. I imagined that the lower part was used as a place to get passengers in and out of the vehicles. And, oh yes, the vehicles were designed with a groove on the bottom to sit astride the rails. Very much like the monorail vehicles at Disneyland. I seem to remember that the rail was not sitting beside the road, but on the grass between two roads, like a divided highway. Maybe Main, I don't know. I also recall it taking a while to drive by. I always thought the demo rail was at least a mile in length. My father told me that a man had spent "all he had" trying to convince the city to put in a monorail, but the city didn't go for it, and the man "lost everything." But seeing these at the time, ultra futuristic, air-streamed steel vehicles lying in the weeds discarded made me think of a futuristic society that had died, older than ours. Probably one of the many reasons I work in Visual Effecs in Los Angeles today. I'll never forget them - too fascinating for a boy of seven.