Monorail Automated Transit Systems Archive Showing Early Driverless Guideway Transportation and Airport People Movers, circa 1960s–1970s

Early Driverless Monorail Public Transportation

Photograph

RROMAG was a pioneering Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) and Automated Guideway Transit (AGT) system developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s by the Rohr Corporation of California. It stands as a landmark mid-century experiment in public transportation, notable for combining driverless automation with early Magnetic Levitation (maglev) technology.OMAG and mid-century automated guideway transit photo archive documenting the 1960s effort to turn monorails, airport shuttles, and compact people movers into practical transportation systems for terminals, parking lots, hotels, and planned urban circulation. Rohr Industries stamps and engineering captions appear on verso of photographs, and includes views of ROMAG vehicles, station approaches, demonstration routes, and factory assembly. During the late 1960s and 1970s, airport expansion, suburban congestion, and federal interest in new urban transportation encouraged companies to develop automated transit systems that could move passengers on elevated guideways without the footprint of conventional rail.

Photo archive of 9 Large color and black and white photographs, each 8" x 10", California and other places, circa 1960s-1970s. Stamps and annotations identify Rohr Industries, Inc. Photographic Services and Engineering Photo. Color renderings show an airport people mover gliding above a parking area beside a terminal building, passengers entering a station marked “Terminal A,” “Parking Lot,” “Terminal B,” and “Airport Hotel,” and a long open-sided vehicle traveling along an elevated guideway through hilly terrain. Black-and-white prints show ROMAG cars entering glass-and-steel stations, elevated guideways beside modernist terminal structures, and a large factory floor where multiple transit cars and car bodies are arranged in parallel production bays. Two contact sheets record several test or promotional views of a people mover running through landscaped hills and desert-like terrain, including distant guideway curves, close vehicle passes, and wide views of the surrounding route.

The archive records both the promotional language and the engineering reality of automated transit at a moment when American transportation planners were trying to solve short-distance movement in airports, office parks, campuses, and dense civic developments. Capital costs and changing political priorities meant that West Virginia's Morgantown PRT became the only major mass-transit system of its type to survive the era into full municipal scale. However, ROMAG's core research laid an essential foundation for modern maglev and linear-motor transit systems used worldwide todayLight toning, binder holes, handling wear, and minor surface wear visible; images remain clear and well preserved. Overall in very good condition.

Item #23403

Price: $385.00