The Meigs Elevated Railway was an experimental but unsuccessful 19th-century elevated steam-powered urban rapid transit system, often described as a monorail but technically pre-electric third rail. It was invented in the United States by Josiah Vincent Meigs (also known as Joe Meigs or Joe Vincent Meigs), of Lowell, Massachusetts, and was demonstrated from 1886 to 1894 in a suburb of Boston called East Cambridge.Robert Campbell and Peter Vanderwarker: "Meigs Elevated Railway" . Boston Globe, February 23, 1992.
History Joe Meigs Josiah Vincent Meigs, who answered to "Joe", was born into a well-connected professional family of Nashville, Tennessee. (His attorney father was a friend of Abraham Lincoln.) He served as captain of the Union Army during the American Civil War, and he made a personal appeal to President Lincoln for permission to raise a detachment of black troops for a colored artillery battery. This was the first of such to serve in the war.Tennessee Historical Quarterly 1983 p. 161
After the war he was a lawyer in Washington. There he became close friends with a fellow veteran, General Benjamin Butler, and the two moved together to Lowell, Massachusetts, where they built adjacent houses. Butler became an influential state politician and was to serve as governor from 1882. Joe Meigs was proving himself to be a capable inventor and was responsible for the Meigs rifle as well as taking out several other firearms patents. In the 1880 US census and in the 1889 Lowell city directory, "inventor" was given as his profession.Young, Jan; Fashion in Steel: Streamlined Steam Locomotives in North America Lulu 2017 p.18
Company Joe Meigs thought out his rapid transit system in the early 1870s, and he patented it in 1875. It is comparable to the Aldershot narrow-gauge suspension railway, built in England in 1872.
As a result of exploiting his social connections in Massachusetts, he attracted substantial backing, including that of his friend General Butler. So, the two set up the Meigs Elevated Railway Company with Butler as president in 1881. The company hung out its shingle at 225 Bridge Street (now Monsignor O'Brien Highway) in East Cambridge, on a site in an industrial area previously occupied by the works of the Bay State Glass Company.The Mechanics of the Meigs Railway 1888 p. 3 It then began to lobby for a state charter to allow it to build rapid transit lines in the streets of Boston and its suburbs.
The company was finally chartered under state law in 1884.Cheape, Charles W: Moving the Masses: Urban Public Transit in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, 1880-1912, Harvard University Press 1980 p. 123 The authorised share capital was $200,000 (about $5,000,000 in 2020 values). However the company was not yet free to construct publicly, because the charter required the approval of the Boston City Council for any construction within city limits. Instead, it allowed the building of a short experimental line at the East Cambridge site. The text included the following proviso:
No location for tracks shall be petitioned for in the city of Boston, until at least one mile of the road has been built and operated, nor until the safety and strength of the structure and the rolling stock and motive power shall have been examined and approved by the board of railroad commissioners or by a competent engineer to be appointed by them.
Meigs amended his design, and he acquired a new patent in 1885.
Demonstration The company raised $20,000 cash (about $500,000 in 2020 values), which was enough to build a full-sized experimental model comprising a short section of the elevated railway. This was to demonstrate the benefits and capabilities of the system under widely varying parameters, as demanded by the charter. The 227-foot (69 metre) iron demonstration line was erected on land abutting company headquarters in Bridge Street, and was opened to paying riders in June 1886.Young, Jan; Fashion in Steel: Streamlined Steam Locomotives in North America Lulu 2017 p.19 The company was permitted to run its line over Bridge Street, to end on property occupied by the hog slaughterhouse of John P. Squire and Company.
The actual erection was performed by a separate company founded by Meigs, the Meigs Elevated Railway Construction Company, which was intended to be in charge of construction of future lines.Maycock, Susan E: East Cambridge, Cambridge Historical Commission 1988 p. 79
The short length of demonstration line in iron was connected to the car shed by a longer wooden version, intended to test the capabilities of the system. This incorporated construction of several types is discernible in a surviving photo of the setup.
The rolling stock comprised three units: a locomotive, a tender and a passenger car.
In July 1886, the Scientific American magazine published an article entitled The Meigs Elevated Railway and containing this assertion:
Everything has worked in the most satisfactory manner, the train rounding the exceedingly sharp curves easily, and mounting the steep grades without trouble.
Promotion A fire, supposedly the result of arson, broke out on the night of February 4, 1887, and destroyed Meigs's car shed as well as burning out the experimental coach. The locomotive and tender escaped. A photo survives of the damage, which Meigs claimed amounted to $10,000 ($250,000 in 2020 values).
Meigs wrote an extensive explanation of how his urban transit system would function, complete with diagrams and statistics, and entitled it The Meigs Railway System: The Reasons For Its Departures From The Ordinary Practice. The work was published later in 1887,Meigs, Joe V., "The Meigs Railway System: The Reasons For Its Departures From The Ordinary Practice" 1887 (Boston: Charles H. Whiting). and followed by a privately published booklet, The Mechanics of the Meigs Railway, in 1888.
However, no urban rapid transit company outside the Boston area made use of the system. The Lake Street Elevated Railroad of Chicago intended to use it when chartered in 1888, but changed its policy and settled on a conventional design before beginning construction.Middleton, William D: Metropolitan Railways, Rapid Transit in America 2003 p. 44
Some international interest was demonstrated in the same year by the publication in Paris, France of a work by Charles Thirion entitled Nouveau Système de Chemin de Fer Aérien Monorail. Nothing came of this, either. This book shows an early use of the term "monorail" to describe the system.
Also the Massachusetts charter was renewed in 1888, but in December of that year the first electric streetcar line in Boston was opened. The experimental establishment at East Cambridge was mothballed in 1891.
Meigs continued campaigning for a line of his system from Boston to Cambridge, but was hostile to the new electric traction. In 1893, he published a booklet entitled True Rapid Transit wherein he rejected both the building of subways and the use of electric power, insisting that steam engines were more economical. In April of that year, the Cambridge experimental train made a single trial trip which was its last. The line was dismantled in 1894, not because of failure but because it had performed its function and Meigs expected to begin construction of a Boston to Cambridge line soon.
Failure In July 1894, the Boston Elevated Railway company was incorporated to build a conventional elevated line from Boston to Cambridge, Roxbury, Charlestown and South Boston. Meigs acquired the franchise, but continued to refuse to countenance the use of electric power. This alienated investors and the public, and he was unable to raise any funds for construction. So, in 1896 he sold the franchise and gave up.Cheney, F: Boston's Red Line: Bridging the Charles from Alewife to Braintree, Arcadia 2002 p.6
The final failure of the Meigs Elevated Railway was owing to its being rejected by Boston investors. When the Boston Elevated Railway reverted to a conventional layout, the money problem went away and the first stretch of elevated line was opened in 1901.
Joe Meigs died of a stroke at home in Charlestown in 1907, and was buried according to the rites of the Unitarian Church.
Remembrance The Meigs system involved two lower load-bearing rails and a central gripper-traction rail, but it has habitually been referred to as a monorail in published sources despite not being one. There is a passing resemblance to the Lartigue Monorail, which in contrast had a central load-bearing rail and two lower guide rails.
In 1876, the Cambridge Historical Commission began a campaign to attach Blue Oval Historical Markers to buildings on sites of historical importance. One was attached to the old Genoa Packing Company building, not at number 225 (which is the Alles Building) but at 221 next door. This was demolished in 2013, and replaced by the Fairfield Inn & Suites which is part of the Marriott chain. The plaque has not reappeared, and is listed by the commission as "marker not currently installed".
The text read: "Meigs' Experimental Railway. Joseph V. Meigs, inventor and entrepreneur, successfully tested a steam-powered elevated monorail train intended for rapid transit use in Boston. 1886."
Joe Meigs's extensive collection of papers and drawings relating to the system, as well as correspondence and genealogical material, is held at the Manuscripts and Archives Department of the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University. An early notebook of his, 1854–66, includes early sketches of parts of the system and is part of the MIT Libraries collections.
Layout of experimental line The following description is based on a plan, with annotations, published in The Meigs Railway System: The Reasons For Its Departures From The Ordinary Practice, page 177.Meigs, Joe V., "The Meigs Railway System: The Reasons For Its Departures From The Ordinary Practice" 1887 (Boston: Charles H. Whiting) p. 177.
The company's premises were on the north side of Bridge Street, number 225 (now Monsignor O'Brien Highway). This road runs roughly east to west. Just west of the company offices, adjacent to and parallel with the street, was a car shed with an adjacent workshop on its north side. Both ends of the shed had large doors through which the train could run.
The experimental line ("trial road") began west of the shed and ran through it at just above ground level, but then rose on a continuous gradient of 2% round a 180 degree curve of 50 feet (15 metres) radius and 165 feet (50 metres) long. The line then ran west parallel to the north side of the car shed, before turning on a 45 degree curve before continuing south-west across the street to its terminus. This section to the second curve also had sections of grades, variable at 4.5%, 5.7% and finally 6.5% on the curve.
Most of the construction was of wood, but the final section of 227 feet (69 metres) over the street was in iron as proposed for future rapid transit construction. Photos exist of the train posed on this section.
The line had differing construction techniques: Wooden construction of the cheapest possible kind, suitable "for yard use, not for traffic" -from the beginning of the line to the shed's west door. Wooden construction, with low track following the contour of the ground -through the shed to the start of the main curve. Wooden construction, with continuous grade secured by increasing the heights of the wooden support posts -around the main curve. Wooden construction beginning level but with variable grades thereafter created by varying pole heights -end of main curve to end of second curve. The latter had the steepest grade, at 6.5%.