Monocab

The Monocab demonstrator during a public test run at Bösingfeld, April 2023

Monocab (stylised MONOCAB) is a German research project developing a small, electrically powered, self-driving rail vehicle that is stabilised by gyroscopes and runs on only one of the two rails of conventional railway track. Because each vehicle uses a single rail, two vehicles travelling in opposite directions could in principle pass each other on a single-track line. The project's stated aim is to reuse disused or lightly used rural branch lines for on-demand passenger transport.

The project is led by the Ostwestfalen-Lippe University of Applied Sciences and Arts (TH OWL) in Lemgo and has received funding from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the German federal government. A demonstrator vehicle first carried passengers in October 2022 on a disused section of the Extertal Railway [de]. As of 2026, the project was aiming for regular trial operation in 2028, after several postponements.

History

Origins

The concept was proposed by Thorsten Försterling of the Landeseisenbahn Lippe (LEL), a railway association in the district of Lippe. In 2018 the idea received the German Mobility Award [de]. The developers cite earlier gyroscopic monorail designs as precursors, including Louis Brennan's gyro monorail of the late 1900s, a 1909 proposal for a rail network of such vehicles by the publisher August Scherl, and the gyroscopically stabilised car built by Pyotr Shilovsky in the 1910s.

In 2018 the LEL presented the concept, under the name "Blue Sky", as part of the Smart Railway OWL project portfolio within the Regionale 2022 [de] regional development programme. It was later combined with "AutoBAHN", a TH OWL project on automated rail operation.

Research project

The research project, named MONOCAB OWL, formally began in September 2020, when the state government of North Rhine-Westphalia issued the funding notice. TH OWL is the lead institution, with the project directed by Thomas Schulte of its Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; the other research partners are Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences and the Fraunhofer Institute IOSB-INA in Lemgo. The first phase had a budget of about €4 million, of which about €2 million came from the ERDF and €1.6 million from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. According to the European Commission, the project had received around €3.1 million in ERDF funding by 2025.

Testing

Vehicle components were assembled in a hall at an industrial park in Dörentrup, which also housed a short indoor test track. A disused section of the Extertal Railway, about 2 km (1.2 mi) long, near Bösingfeld in the municipality of Extertal was chosen as the outdoor test track.

On 3 October 2022 a demonstrator named Thusnelda carried passengers over the test section. It did not yet include all the components planned for the final vehicles; a full-size mock-up of the planned cabin was displayed alongside it. During test runs, a safety catch fitted to the vehicle ran along the second rail to prevent it from tipping over. A second public demonstration took place on 28 April 2023.

Later development

In November 2023 the federal government agreed to fund the project with a total of €7 million from 2024 to 2026. At the time, regular trial operation was planned for 2028 at the earliest. Also in 2023, the project signed a cooperation agreement with the organisers of the International Garden Exhibition 2027 [de] in the Ruhr to present Monocab at the exhibition.

In October 2025 the project received a RegioStars award from the European Commission, which recognises projects funded under EU regional policy. A further project phase, running from June 2025 to November 2026, had planned expenditure of more than €5 million.

By mid-2026 the project was also investigating a variant in which the vehicle runs on a newly built single rail rather than on existing track. Thusnelda was operating on a 20 m (66 ft) test track at the Innovation Campus Lemgo, and a 300 m (980 ft) route with curves and gradients was planned for completion by the end of 2026. One goal of the phase ending in November 2026 was to demonstrate Monocab-specific track and switching technology; as of July 2026, transferring a vehicle between rails had not yet been demonstrated. The project presented its development status at InnoTrans in Berlin in September 2026.

Design

The planned vehicle is 5.25 m (17.2 ft) long and 1.20 m (3.9 ft) wide, with seating for four to six passengers. Because the cabin is wider than a single rail allows symmetrically, it is offset from the rail along its longitudinal axis. The cabin is designed to be accessible to wheelchair users and passengers with bicycles: the 1.50 m (4.9 ft) wide doors have a lower section that folds down onto the platform to form a ramp. The developers have stated an intended top speed of 70 km/h (43 mph).

Stabilisation

The vehicle is kept upright by an active stabilisation system with three levels. Two electrically driven gyroscopes, each weighing about 250 kg (550 lb) and spinning at 4,800 rpm, counter dynamic disturbances. A movable mass of about 600 kg (1,300 lb), made mainly of lead, compensates for static imbalances such as uneven passenger loading. In the event of a power failure, the angular momentum of the gyroscopes is intended to keep the vehicle upright for some time; four electrically deployed support legs serve as a final fallback and are also used for parking. Because of the asymmetric layout, the heavy components are placed on the inner side of the vehicle, between the rails.

The control system uses redundant control units and sensors, including inertial measurement units, so that the vehicle can continue operating if one unit fails. Communication systems for automated operation, including platooning, were developed in a related project, 5G SIMONE, with partners including DB Systemtechnik and T-Systems.

Intended operation

Monocab is intended as a form of "individual public transport" between private and conventional public transport: rather than following a fixed timetable, passengers would book vehicles on demand. An alternative operating concept envisages vehicles circulating continuously, like a paternoster. The primary intended use is on disused or little-used lines in rural areas, with possible later use in urban settings.

Several practical questions remained open after the 2022 demonstration, including the design of level crossings and stops. Writing in 2026, Notebookcheck noted that the vehicles' asymmetric design means they would normally need a turning loop or turntable to switch direction on existing lines, and that a TU Dortmund working paper identified switches as a significant challenge.

Reception

In 2019 Auto Motor und Sport highlighted the concept's potential for rural transport but noted that funding, feasibility studies and cost assessments were still lacking. The same year, Deutschlandfunk Nova compared Monocab with the University of Paderborn's RailCab project and considered Monocab easier to implement, as it would not compete with regular train services and could use some of the roughly 6,500 km (4,000 mi) of disused railway lines in Germany.

Reporting on the October 2022 demonstration, WDR described the vehicle as impressive but concluded that it would need many more years of development before it could be ready for market. In 2026 Notebookcheck described the project's roadmap as unclear, noting that different project documents gave different target dates for reaching full operational readiness.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Could an electric monorail connect communities in rural Ireland?". RTÉ. 11 November 2026. Retrieved 12 November 2026.
  2. 1 2 3 "MONOCAB-OWL – A Visionary Monorail Vehicle for a New Mobility". German Center for Research and Innovation New York. 27 June 2022. Retrieved 10 March 2023.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 "Monocabs in OWL: Fahrt im Extertal" (in German). Westdeutscher Rundfunk. October 2022. Retrieved 28 February 2023.
  4. 1 2 "MONOCAB OWL" (in German). EFRE.NRW. Retrieved 1 March 2023.
  5. 1 2 3 "Sieben Millionen für die lippischen Monocabs" [Seven million for Lippe's Monocabs]. Lippische Landes-Zeitung (in German). 17 November 2023. Retrieved 5 December 2023.
  6. 1 2 "Monocab meistert Testfahrt" [Monocab passes test run]. Westfalenspiegel (in German). October 2022. Retrieved 27 March 2023.
  7. 1 2 3 4 Sebayang, Andreas (25 July 2026). "Monocab: Self-balancing monorail now runs on new tracks as a campus shuttle". Notebookcheck. Retrieved 12 November 2026.
  8. 1 2 "Mobilität: Wiederbelebung alter Zugstrecken mit dem Countrycab" [Mobility: reviving old railway lines with the Countrycab] (in German). Deutschlandfunk Nova. December 2018. Retrieved 28 March 2023.
  9. ↑ "Deutscher Mobilitätspreis: Paternoster-Monorail statt Bahn und Auto" [German Mobility Award: paternoster monorail instead of train and car]. Focus Online (in German). November 2018. Retrieved 3 March 2023.
  10. ↑ Moffett, Cleveland (1907). "The Edge of the Future in Science: Transportation and the Gyroscope – Louis Brennan's Mono-Rail Car". McClure's. Vol. 30. pp. 163–173.
  11. 1 2 Griese, Martin; Kottmeier, Fabian; Schulte, Thomas (2021). Vertical Control of a Self-stabilizing Monorail Vehicle. IECON 2021 – 47th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society. IEEE. pp. 1–6. ISBN 978-1-6654-3554-3.
  12. 1 2 "Blue Sky" (PDF) (Pitch deck) (in German). Smart Railway OWL. October 2018. Retrieved 22 March 2023.
  13. ↑ "Wie alles begann" [How it all began] (in German). MONOCAB OWL. Retrieved 19 March 2023.
  14. ↑ "AutoBAHN" (in German). Move In OWL. Retrieved 19 March 2023.
  15. ↑ "Förderbescheid für MonoCab OWL" [Funding notice for MonoCab OWL] (Press release) (in German). Ministry of Transport of North Rhine-Westphalia. 9 September 2020. Retrieved 13 March 2023.
  16. 1 2 "Monocab vor dem Start" [Monocab about to start]. Westfalen-Blatt (in German). September 2020. Retrieved 24 March 2023.
  17. ↑ "Arbeitsgruppen" [Working groups] (in German). MONOCAB OWL. Retrieved 20 March 2023.
  18. ↑ "MONOCAB OWL – Regionalentwicklung mit anderen Mitteln" [MONOCAB OWL – regional development by other means]. OWL-Journal (in German). September 2020. Retrieved 13 March 2023.
  19. 1 2 "Mobilitätsprojekt aus NRW von EU-Kommission ausgezeichnet" [Mobility project from NRW honoured by the EU Commission] (Press release) (in German). Representation of the European Commission in Germany. 16 October 2025. Retrieved 12 November 2026.
  20. 1 2 "Die Strecke" [The route] (in German). MONOCAB OWL. Retrieved 19 March 2023.
  21. 1 2 "AG Kabine & Design" [Cabin & Design working group] (in German). MONOCAB OWL. Retrieved 6 March 2023.
  22. ↑ "Symposium Ausblicke 2023" (in German). MONOCAB OWL. Retrieved 27 April 2023.
  23. 1 2 Brunsing, Jürgen (2025). Monocabs als Teil des SPNV im ländlichen Raum [Monocabs as part of regional rail passenger transport in rural areas] (PDF) (Report). Arbeitspapier 1/2025 (in German). TU Dortmund University, Department of Transport Planning. Retrieved 12 November 2026.
  24. ↑ "Germany is turning abandoned railway tracks into monorail routes". Euronews. 16 March 2026. Retrieved 12 November 2026.
  25. ↑ "InnoTrans 2026". MONOCAB OWL. Retrieved 12 November 2026.
  26. ↑ "Ministerin zur Hannover Messe: "Von OWL lernen heißt siegen lernen"". Neue Westfälische (in German). 21 April 2023. Retrieved 24 April 2023.
  27. ↑ Fasel, Andreas (9 January 2024). "Bahn-Innovation: Neue Schienenfahrzeuge sollen stillgelegte Strecken nutzbar machen" [Rail innovation: new rail vehicles to make disused lines usable]. Die Welt (in German). Retrieved 9 January 2024.
  28. 1 2 3 Griese, Martin; Mousavi, Seyed Davood; Schulte, Thomas (2022). HIL Simulation of a Self-stabilizing Monorail Vehicle. IECON 2022 – 48th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society. IEEE. pp. 1–6. ISBN 978-1-6654-8025-3.
  29. 1 2 3 4 "AG Stabilisierung" [Stabilisation working group] (in German). MONOCAB OWL. Retrieved 14 March 2023.
  30. ↑ "MONOCAB-Premiere: Erste Projektergebnisse zu 5G SIMONE" [MONOCAB premiere: first project results for 5G SIMONE]. Internationales Verkehrswesen (in German). October 2022. Retrieved 4 March 2023.
  31. ↑ "Monocab der Landeseisenbahn Lippe". Auto Motor und Sport (in German). May 2019. Retrieved 9 March 2023.
  32. ↑ "Zukunft der Mobilität: Der individualisierte Bahnverkehr wäre schön" [Future of mobility: individualised rail transport would be nice] (in German). Deutschlandfunk Nova. September 2019. Retrieved 17 March 2023.

Further reading