My Life at 9200 rpm's: Christmas monorail ride

One of the attractions of the Christmas season in Chicago, was to see the animated figures in the windows at Marshall Field's. All of the ground floor windows of the block-square store were wonderfully decorated.  The designs changed each year.  Uncle Mistletoe, a Field's perennial character was featured in many windows. Another attraction was the huge Christmas tree that stood a part of the store that was rotunda-like and at least five stories high.

But the best of all was the kids' monorail that was suspended from the ceiling at Sears. It was a real people moving train that soared over the holiday shoppers. It traveled all around one floor of the store at the south end of Chicago's Loop. The train was on an upper floor where the Sears toy department was.

I only recalled the monorail as a random thought.  As a youngster in the 40's and 50's in Chicago, we experienced some things that today's youth will not.  And so it goes; just like the Ringling Brothers big top.

The train had enclosed cars and crept along the suspended rail that circumnavigated the periphery of the store. The train traveled over Santa as he talked to children and over all of the displays and counters.  It was always full of riders and the wait for a turn took forever.  For a kid, it was thrilling.

I learned that the monorail's manufacturer was the Louden Machinery Company of Fairfield, Iowa. Louden was active in the late 1800's, essentially as a farm machinery developer and manufacturer.  The monorail was not for farm use at all but was adapted from some of the company's other applications.

Specifically, it stemmed from the company's invention of a sliding barn door assembly. You've all seen pictures of sliding barn doors. The Louden door had rollers along its top edge that hooked into a track.  The door, usually one piece and very heavy, could be opened and closed with mechanical ease using the roller track. 

A few imaginative modifications to the barn door opening assembly after WW II had Louden building child sized sky rail systems. Besides Sears in Chicago, large stores like the Wanamakers in Philadelphia and the Meier and Frank Store in Portland, Oregon had monorail rides. There must have been about a dozen kiddie monorail rides across the country.

I do not know how long the monorail lasted but I didn't ride it after the early 1950s.