mono-rail
(ˈmɒnəʊreɪl)
Also monorail.
[f. mono- + rail n.2]
a. A single rail astride which or suspended from which railway vehicles or the like run; also, a vehicle that travels in this way. Also attrib. Hence ˈmono-railer; ˈmonorailing vbl. n. mono-railway.
| 1897 Westm. Gaz. 9 Apr. 4/2 Patent electric express railway..built on the mono-rail system. 1901 Daily News 14 Mar. 3/2 The Proposed Monorail between Liverpool and Manchester. 1902 Westm. Gaz. 16 May 5/3 A scheme..for the construction of a mono-railway. 1902 Encycl. Brit. XXXII. 143/2 In the Langen mono-rail the car is hung from a single overhead rail; a line on this system is worked between Barmen and Elberfeld, a distance of about 9 miles. 1949 Sun (Baltimore) 3 Oct. 2/7 These chutes will pull the guns out of the rear clam shell doors of the C-82 along monorails attached to the roof of the fuselage. 1958 Daily Mail 17 Jan. 9/4 A trip on the world's first monorail. 1960 Farmer & Stockbreeder 16 Feb. (Suppl.) 35/1 One is an overhead monorail down the centre feeding passage to carry a food container from which the rations may be semi-automatically fed into the troughs. 1962 R. B. Fuller Epic Poem on Industrialization 44 Their 1929 failure With world monopoly ‘Mono-railing’ Was only caused by the fact that Their first trial section of single rail Was not long enough. 1963 Punch 7 Aug. 194/2 The monorailer slid to a halt. 1964 Daily Tel. 7 Jan. 15/1 A free monorail system may be built in North Buckinghamshire. 1971 Ibid. 16 Apr. 6/7 A French demonstration hovertrain has been running for 18 months on an 11-mile stretch of elevated monorail outside Orléans. 1973 R. Kerrod First Look at Railways Today 45 It is called a monorail, for it moves along a single rail. |
b. monorail camera, a technical camera having as part of its stand a bar or monorail which allows considerable adjustment of the apparatus and may support additional components.
| 1958 D. Charles Commercial & Industr. Photogr. i. 10 Monorail camera..a recent, mainly metal, engineer-built construction, with a full array of ‘movements’. 1971 P. D. James Shroud for Nightingale iii. 52 The Yard photographer manœuvred his tripod and camera—a new Cambo monorail. |