Thursday, August 09, 2007

Monorail Boy


Photo & Text Copyright 2007 Seattle Daily Photo. All rights reserved, including reproduction or republishing.

That little face peering down from a window of the elevated Monorail to the street below was so cute. Trains of all kinds and kids are an inseparable duet.

The Seattle Monorail was a fixture of the 1962 World's Fair. 45 years later it still connects Seattle Center with the Downtown shopping area at Westlake Center and is mostly used by tourists. In 1997 Seattlites voted to expand the monorail system to become a viable part of the area's rapid transit system. Plans were made for an initial 14 mile Green Line to connect West Seattle, Downtown, and the northwest neighborhoods of the city; however, those plans were finally nixed eight years into the planning process after much controversy and taxpayer expense. The historic existing one mile route of the Monorail had its own troubles in 2005 costing millions of dollars to repair and months of down time after two trains collided and wedged together, the result of a known design flaw from a 1988 platform rebuild and operator error.

7 comments:

Lavenderlady said...

Won't it be nice when the light rail is finished...you are right, there is just something about kids and trains.

drpack said...

Thanks for the warm welcome. I'm enjoying looking for topics to photograph.
I have checked out your photos and am suitably impressed. Very nice and very interesting. I haven't been to Seattle for a long time and must make the trip again soon. When is the next time the sun is scheduled to shine? ;-) Couldn't help giving you a good old Oregon dig!
Cheers
DRP

travelphilippines said...

makes me wanna kidnap him hehe. soooo cuuuuuteeeee.

Carraol said...

A beautiful composition!

blueboat said...

such a lovely photo - the child is wonderfully captured, with his little blond head.. gorgeous

• Eliane • said...

Adorable! I am really enjoying my tour on your blog.

Anonymous said...

I just wanted to find out information on the current Seattle Monorail and by searching using "current Seattle monorail" or "Seattle monorail" or "monorail" all that comes up is information about the failed monorail project and the negative comments made by the locals in politics. How sad. I wonder if tourists using the internet get this frustrated trying to find the schedule, prices, map to loading docks, etc.
Nice picture, though.