World's Fair Trains: AMF Monorail

American Machine and Foundry or AMF (now?Amf Bowling Worldwide) was founded in 1900 and grew to become a worldwide industrial technology and leisure products company. Better known for creating bowling alley equipment, AMF manufactured diversified products as disparate as garden supplies, tennis rackets, atomic reactor housing, and yachts. In 1963, AMF partnered with French engineering and consulting company SAFEGE to design, construct, and market a monorail for American cities. AMF built a forty-foot high, $4.2 million monorail system for the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair - the second World's Fair to be held at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in the Borough of Queens, New York.

Fourteen red and white air-conditioned cars hung from rubber-tired power units that traveled on an overhead rail, transporting patrons around the site. Despite drawing more enthusiastic attention to monorail systems as a transportation concept for the future, the AMF Monorail was not replicated anywhere else.?The monorail, along with most other fair structures, was demolished at the conclusion of the fair. While AMF abandoned its monorail plans, the AMF Monorail was responsible for many of today’s rail enthusiasts’ first ride on monorail.