Gyro Cars

[SCEtoAUX]

I ran across a picture of a Shilovsky - Wolseley Gyrocar chasis

and started digging around the net.
Found some interesting sites.
Shilovsky - Wolseley Gyrocar

Shilovsky - Wolseley Gyrocar2

gyrocar-5-designs-never-knew-existed

1961-ford-gyron-concept-inspires-a-modern-day-chinese-gyrocar

[airdave]

Absolutely fascinating vehicles!!!!!!!!!!!!
Not sure I would trust that Rail car either!

That Chinese Bike is really sharp!
I guess it comes down to how well it is designed and put together.
Build quality and all that.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/featu...ctric-makeover

But this argument over whether it is a car or a bike seems silly.
Its obviously a electro-gyro-motor-car-bike.
LOL a new category must be created!

Cycle just means to transport.
A motor-cycle by definition is a motor driven transport vehicle.
The word motor-cycle doesn't actually specify how many ground contact points there are (wheels).
So, a motorcycle could technically have anywhere from 1 to 32 wheels!
I guess, somewhere along the way, we lost "motorbicycle"

Alas, I still think $16k is too much for a two-wheeler.

[SCEtoAUX]

Yeah, electro-gyro-motor-car-bike would fit the ticket.

When I read about Schilovsky envisioning his idea as an all-terrain military vehicle a vision of Steve McQueen jumping barbed wire rolls on one popped in my head.

[FRD]

That's pretty impressive!..

[Thumb Dog]

Hi All,

And hi, SCEtoAUX. Well, you’ve done it now, you’ve released the Kraken. In referencing the greatest single machine that has ever been created by the hand of man, allow me to offer some more information concerning the Brennan Gyroscopic Monorail.

To step back in time, understand that Irish-born Louis Brennan made his fortune long before his interest in monorail transportation. He is known to history as the inventor and proprietor of the world’s first, practical guided missile. In its time, the shore-launched, wire-guided, underwater torpedo was an absolute must-have for all coastal nations wishing to protect their vulnerable shores. Brennan’s creation of this world-altering weapon secured his fortune and allowed him to investigate mechanical solutions to other impossible problems. Such as, how can a full-size rail car be made to stand up and progress along a single rail laid upon the ground?

In these modern times, hooking up a gyroscope to a computer is a common practice. Segways, steady cams and all manner of stabilization devices are on the market to keep us on an even keel. But, at the turn of the century, gyroscopes needed to be hooked up mechanically to have the desired effect on unstable bodies. Enter the Brennan Gyroscopic Monorail. Louis Brennan first patented his monorail’s ideas in 1903 and worked tirelessly to build his models and finally his full-sized demonstrator rail car. The photographs I’ve attached here will show many aspects of his largest model and the completed car.

Brennan determined that two, vertically mounted, contra-rotating gyroscopes could keep a vehicle the size of a streetcar upright as it traveled down a single rail. His real genius clicked when he mechanically connected the frames that supported the two gyroscopes. He found that the natural precession of one gyro would have an effect on the precession of the other, allowing the vehicle to not only remain upright, but to bank like a bicycle as it negotiated a turn at speed. His car used twin, 1,500 pound gyroscopes, each just over a meter in diameter to steady the car above the rail. The gyros spun at 3,000 rpm inside enclosures that were devoid of air. A vacuum pump allowed the discs to spin without fighting the energy-stealing friction of fluid air. Each of the car’s wheels were double flanged, meaning each wheel had a flange on each of its two sides. They rode on a specially built rail that had a rounded cross section where the wheel met the rail.

Brennan's six foot aluminum monorail model could carry children and small adults, and it created great interest in the potential of the full-sized project. Not only could the model navigate up and down inclines on the demonstration track set up outside Brennan’s home, it could even travel along a taught wire strung over his lawn. The model still exists, and is conserved by the National Railway Museum at York, England.

The full-sized car made its public debut in 1910 at the Japan-British Exhibition at the White City, London. The astounding vehicle received praise and interest from all corners of the railroading world. Articles appeared in every technology magazine of the time. Contracts were let for a line to be built in India, and Alaska saw promise in the technology and proposed to build a line. However, the promise of true monorail travel was not to be realized. The Great War began in 1914, and by its end, many advances had been made in many fields and the gyroscopic monorail was all but forgotten.

Part of its demise was the natural unease people had when they imagined the car tipping over as the gyros stopped spinning. This may have been a possibility in 1910, but that worry shouldn’t be given a second thought today. At this very instant, somewhere, 30,000 feet above your head, is a giant, winged aluminum tube being kept aloft by four madly spinning gyroscopes (jet engines) and nobody is concerned that the engines will stop and the plane will fall out of the sky. The technology of turbines has been sorted. The technology exists today to reconsider bringing back the century-old dream of a true monorail. A gyroscopic monorail.

I close with a photograph that shows the wonderful promise of Brennan’s marvelous monorail. It’s a foggy picture of a single rail extending off into the distance. The seemingly magical gyroscopic monorail car is one thing, but this absolute minimum of needed infrastructure is the greatest selling point of the system. Compare this stately single rail with the ridiculous infrastructure that is used in today’s costly, disruptive and ugly light rail systems.

It’s time to bring back the Gyroscopic Monorail.

Score and fold,

Thumb Dog

[whulsey]

http://www.carstyling.ru/en/cars.1961_Ford_Gyron.html

Here's more info on the Ford Gyron. Tremulis was the guest speaker at our 1989 Kaiser Frazer Owners Club International Meet at the Queen Mary in Long Beach. Got to meet him after the banquet, but unfortunately he was getting a little shaky by then so didn't really get to talk with him. Over the years have ruminated about trying to do a model of it, but never get started on it.