The monorail system at Zoo Miami opened during the zoo’s second season, when the zoo was called Miami MetroZoo. Universal Mobility, Inc. (UMI), manufactured this system with a second company, Budd Company of Detroit, Michigan. In 1980, Miami MetroZoo purchased a $13.5 million dollar Tourister system from UMI. This system was scheduled to be opened …
In 1969, a new state-funded zoo was being developed for the metropolitan Minneapolis / St. Paul, Minnesota area. The Minnesota Legislature created the Minnesota State Zoo Board (MSZB) to study the possibility of building such a facility. The study took several years, and planning and land acquisition took several more years after that. Minnesota Zoological Gardens, …
In 1973, Universal Mobility, Inc. (UMI) debuted their UNIMOBIL Tourister Type II monorail system. Six systems would be built over the following eleven years, three which were opened in successive years – 1973, 1974 and 1975. These are the systems that operated at Carowinds, Kings Island, and Kings Dominion. Carowinds Monorail Carowinds opened on March …
Universal Mobility, Incorporated (UMI), was a company based out of Salt Lake City, Utah that existed from approximately 1967 to 1989. UMI was best known for constructing a handful of monorail systems in places such as Hershey, Pennsylvania, Magic Mountain in California, and the Louisiana World’s Fair in 1984. Other products UMI manufactured included tram …
Habegger Maschinenfabrik AG is a company in Thun, Switzerland. It was founded by Willy Habegger in 1943. They began manufacturing a type of monorail they were calling a “minirail” sometime in the early 1960s. At the time, the company was called Maschinenfabrik Habegger. European expositions 1964 – 66 The first monorail Habegger designed was for …