Shipbucket

One of the fascinating vehicles of the future in the Gerry Anderson puppet action show Thunderbirds was the Monotrain, a future high-speed Monotrain long-distance train. It certainly captured my imagination and finally I have rendered it in FD scale.


The first of the Monotrains to appear in Thunderbirds episode Brink of Disaster is the Pacific Atlantic Monotrain, a 300mph fully automated transcontinental monorail with a capacity for 500 passengers, but with only 500 miles of track, a financial scam, jewel thieves, a helijet crashing into a bridge and only Brain's ability able to engage the braking systems manually to avert a disaster it's hardly a runaway success!


The Series 2 episode Perils of Penelope features two Monotrains. The Intercontinental Rocket runs from Paris to Asia. It is aboard this train that the rocket scientist Dr Borrender is abducted from the train inside the fictional 24-mile long Anderbad Tunnel in the Alpsand later Lady Penelope is snatched while investigating the mystery.
It is the same model as the Pacific Atlantic Monotrain but you will note there are quite a few subtlety different panel lines and differences in the 'chrome' embellishments on the nose and pylons to make some visual differences.


The Anderbad Express is the second Monotrain in Perils of Penelope, the Anderbad Express serving the fictional city the other side of the Alps and which provides all the tension given the bad guy's nefarious plan to kill Lady Penelope with the train (think Western tropes of lady tied to the tracks).
There are two Anderbad driving coach models, one is a repainted Pacific Atlantic/Rocket model but remodelled with three windows plus a sticker on the dining car. The separate close-up model had the Anderbad Express titles closer to the driver's cab to fit on screen but also has quite a few differences in panel lines and the lower intakes are different. The version I've drawn blends both models.


This my 'proper' Anderbad Express with the whole train repainted in the Anderbad Express colour scheme and adding a cargo coach as designed by Graham Bleatham for one of the Thunerbirds Annual cutaways in the 2010s.


This Monotrain is from the TV21 comic in the 1960s, and featured in the Lady Penelope comic strip The Return of Mr Steelman. In the story £1 billion of gold to pay for medical isotopes is being transported from Strasbourg to Berlin and is hijacked by a novel means by Mr Steelman by his robot army. The monotrain is automated, has a top speed of 400mph and has a unique twin rail set-up, using overhead rail at the station and urban areas and switching to an embarkment system once it enters the rural areas of the Black Forest. The upper pylons being retractable to cut drag.


The Network UK monotrain, is a Graham Bleatham idea for Thunderbirds comic in 1992-93 and was one of his excellent cutaway artworks. (As a joke he had the Intercity 125 relegated to local routes still running in 2026!)


This colourful Bereznik train featured in a Graham Bleatham artwork of the Bereznik capital Katania for the 1990s. Bereznik was the USSR bad-guys analogue in the TV21 comic.


This London Transport version was shown in a 2010s cutaway drawing of the London Heliport in one of the cutaway annuals and was drawn by Graham Bleatham. It is the 2060s replacement for the Overground service (the yellow TfL logos are my addition).

_________________
Hood's Worklist
English Electric Canberra FD
Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft

Fantastic series!

Inspired by the appearance of the Balmoral Bird in a Stingray comic strip in the comic TV21, here is an FD scale version based on my what-if ATP monotrain.

_________________
Hood's Worklist
English Electric Canberra FD
Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft

Wowsers! Amazing monorails, Hood

_________________
Hey, it's gotta be 5 o'clock somewhere...

Currently working on:
The October War, 27-10-1962 (apparently forever);
"Saxonverse" alt-UK;
Federation of the Channel Islands AU;
Republic of Yopur & Andaman;
some sort of overarching AU;
Regaining my sanity.