This was way past my Lego playing days. Hope to find it on a garage sale for $30 some day.

Can't have been popular. Nobody seems to have noticed it....

I found this in a bulk lot this year…but it’s only 90% complete and all the pieces missing are the monorails and the 9v motor. Not sure if it’s even worth anything to anyone in that state.

Oh man, this is the inspiration Jang did on his channel that looked like a McDonald's rail station.
Legendary set for sure.

The two level double loop was an efficient way to save space and an improvement on the previous Space version 6990-1. Probably the only official raised City station or train set with two stations! Really came into its own with expansion set 6347-1 which included two points, which were a really clever design, and where included in the later 1994 Transport base 6991-1. The high price is probably because not as popular as the Space versions, so less made and sold? Before remortgaging there are plenty of monorail mocs online which are worth a look at mainly using rollercoaster track.

@AustinPowers said:
" @DekoPuma said:
"I heard those things are awfully loud"
Depends on how well kept (and carefully oiled) the motor has been.
My favorite of the three is still 6990, which I was lucky enough to find in top condition second hand for a reasonable price a while ago. The motor runs smoothly and is not too loud. Of course it's not as quiet as say a modern H0 locomotive with high-end motor, but it's not terrible either. "

So would you say it glides as softly as a cloud?

The vintage g.o.a.t! My friend had this set when we were growing up and I always wanted it!

@Ridgeheart said:
" @kyrodes said:
" @Straconus said:
"Need a modern re-make."

They should use the roller coaster rail to build something like this."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfM4dS8FZlI"
This reminds me of a rather weird setup I saw last week at Lego World in Utrecht, where they "solved" the "It's just half a train!"-issue of the 60197......by having elevated tracks and hanging a second (still just half...) train underneath the tracks...certainly a unique setup :-)

The one from Jason isn't that far fetched though, it reminds me a lot of the Wuppertaler Schwebebahn.

As for the Lego monorail: still one of the coolest sets in Lego history!

@DavidGraham said:
"I saw a LEGO train advertised in the paper some years ago (2002?), so phoned him to ask what one it was, I asked all sort of questions, what was the colour, passenger or freight, what colour was the track? In the end I worked out it wasn't a train but the Airport Shuttle monorail.
He lived out in a farm in the country, so I met him in a pub car park and followed him to his house. I think it was £100 and included lots of other bricks, it was his whole LEGO collection.
Today it would be advertised on ebay, and no way would I get to buy it. "

Not necessarily. Some people don't know what they have. I bought a 95% complete Black Seas Barracuda for £10 about 18 months ago. And about 6 months ago, got most of the bottom half of another for £2, including five figures.

@WizardOfOss said:
" @Ridgeheart said:
" @kyrodes said:
" @Straconus said:
"Need a modern re-make."

They should use the roller coaster rail to build something like this."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfM4dS8FZlI"
This reminds me of a rather weird setup I saw last week at Lego World in Utrecht, where they "solved" the "It's just half a train!"-issue of the 60197......by having elevated tracks and hanging a second (still just half...) train underneath the tracks...certainly a unique setup :-)

The one from Jason isn't that far fetched though, it reminds me a lot of the Wuppertaler Schwebebahn.

As for the Lego monorail: still one of the coolest sets in Lego history!"
Lego need to start a Thunderbirds theme... for the monorail as well as everything else!
https://youtu.be/HFs2XG3RGLM

@BirdDeadWorld said:
"Is there a chance the track could bend?"
Depends on how much heat you apply ;-)

I miss these sets! Now they're very expensive.

The grailest of grails.
I got an old Ideas book in a bin, and it has a sheet of stickers, including a couple of the T-style from this. I'd love to have something to apply them to.

The G.O.A.T.! The UNICORN! My favourite lego set ever <3

i had this for Xmas in '91... it was the most beautiful Xmas in my life! my father paid it 250.000L (about 130€) at local toy shop.
Years later (about 2010) i get the unitron monorail too on ebay for a cheapy price only to have switches and more tracks

In 2020, during the pandemia i waited the new year playing with this set, still with its original box in my collection:
https://scontent-fco2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.6435-9/135124190_10217869387437049_8646979236357354773_n.jpg?_nc_cat=105&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=dd63ad&_nc_ohc=vWgx9_8zBzcAX_NBVtL&_nc_ht=scontent-fco2-1.xx&oh=00_AfD0TUBem1sRvBhvRoDfrnGDFr-iSw3wnI6Qa7FfhBSqVQ&oe=655F1FC4

as a lot of people already wrote a set to have but to expensive for them in those days. With the catalog pictures in mind I went a lot of experimenting to make my own monorail. With different outcomes but it was fun to do. Later on I was able to get a complete set through, I believe Ebay, voor around €400 if I'm not wrong. Later I stumbelt over an advert on a dutch marketsite where somebody put it just online and was asking about €50 for it. Of course I went straight on the telephone to make the deal. And at first I got the deal but some minutes later the seller phoned me back that he was getting overwhelmed with phonecalls and that he had much more biddings. Well I wasn's surprised of course and went a little on with him and offered €150. That was oke but not much later he came back on it. He was offered €600..... at that point was getting angry and told him that I was not very pleased in how he was working and told him I felt I was in my right to make the deal with him but he pulled back. The marketsite had no means to solve this problem and at least I pulled out..... Of course I would be very happy if I had two sets of it but it went a bit to far....
My first set is still part in the layout and recently I was able to get a great number of spare tracks so there is a possiblity to expand the track some time.

Certainly among the BIG expensive sets from the era, and yes those were sets that would cost $350+ calculated back with inflation.

Even back then , prices would be different from year to year.

This set listed at $170 in a 1992 catalog, $180 in 1993

6990 : Monorail Transport System listed at $144 in 1989 and $155 in 1990

8094 : Control Centre listed at $195 in 1992, and $199 in 1993

6991 : Monorail Transport Base listed at $178 in 1994

(source US Shop at Home catalogs right on brickset )

My unicorn! I always wanted this set, but thankfully I did get the Space Monorail 6990

@Martin_S said:
" @Lyichir said:
" @mrzeon said:
"I loved seeing pictures of this in catalogs as a kid.

767 pieces today get you a flower, or the first layer of tiles of a modular."

On the flip side, $140 today will get you a heck of a lot more than just 767 pieces. The monorail system was a lot of things but cost-efficient wasn't one of them."

but look at the size of the pieces though..."

Also, a motor and a battery box. Nowadays just those together would probably be valued at about €100 ;-)

@Skut said:
" @Brickalili said:
" @AustinPowers said:
" @DekoPuma said:
"I heard those things are awfully loud"
Depends on how well kept (and carefully oiled) the motor has been.
My favorite of the three is still 6990, which I was lucky enough to find in top condition second hand for a reasonable price a while ago. The motor runs smoothly and is not too loud. Of course it's not as quiet as say a modern H0 locomotive with high-end motor, but it's not terrible either. "

Oooh, I’m sorry but the correct answer was “It glides as softly as a cloud”

@BirdDeadWorld said:
"Is there a chance the track could bend?"

Not on your life my Brickset friend!"

But 6390 's still all cracked and broken..."

Sorry @Skut, 1066 has spoken

Such a beauty! I like this one more than the space ones. I own NONE of them... :-(

@AustinPowers:
Funny thing is, when we do hobby train shows, we hear all the time how amazingly quiet our LEGO trains are compared to all the clackity HO-scale stuff. Can’t do anything about a bunch of hollow plastic soundboxes getting towed around the layout.

@desser1 said:
" @Huwbot said: "If you want to add it to your collection you should find it for sale at BrickLink, where new ones sell for one kidney, in good health."

*Sigh*, he has no concept of money. ;-)"

Fixed it for you.

@Lexomatic:
Funny thing is, in college, my dorm’s elevator was so slow that a lot of us took the stairs two at a time going up (we lived on 3rd, and the entrances were half a floor below 1st, so that’s 2.5 stories up). Down was a little faster, generally at four steps per story (spiral staircase, so best you could “safely” do is corner-to-corner). If I have to hit the restroom (2nd floor) when I’m stopping at The LEGO Store (3rd floor), I still usually take the stairs back up two at a time, and that’s with balls of the feet right on the edge of the step.

BTW, my car for most of high school was a Schwinn 10-speed. I couldn’t get the derailleur to work properly, so I set it to 10th gear and locked it down. My calves still look like rocks I had granite implants.

@ICAbricks:
Cheapest New/Sealed Mr. Gold is currently ~$5228.11, so…

@PurpleDave : I'm an H0 model railroader too, and from my experience the locomotives can vary widely in terms of noise. Sure, cheap tat sounds awful, but quality material like from Fleischmann, Brawa, Roco, Piko etc. can be so quiet that you can hardly hear a thing. Also depends on the quality of the layout of course. But on a properly built and maintained fixed layout, the trains can be very quiet. Mine certainly are.

This was my white whale, and I finally got it earlier this year. Not for a steal, but certainly better than most online estimates.

Something snapped for me. The price of new sets crossed a personal line, and I just decided if I am going to spend hundreds on Lego, I am going to get the sets I've always dreamed of.

One of the best sets ever! I saw this set on Amazon for a thousand of bucks... Very expensive...

It is iconic set from the better days of town/city sets.
It was always crazy expensive.
It was the most expensive set that I bought ever about 8 years ago, now it is worth 3-4 times more.
So if it is white whale for you, consider it an investment. You won't loose money on that...

Got 6990 and 6991 but this one never interested me.

@WizardOfOss said:
" @Martin_S said:
" @Lyichir said:
" @mrzeon said:
"I loved seeing pictures of this in catalogs as a kid.

767 pieces today get you a flower, or the first layer of tiles of a modular."

On the flip side, $140 today will get you a heck of a lot more than just 767 pieces. The monorail system was a lot of things but cost-efficient wasn't one of them."

but look at the size of the pieces though..."

Also, a motor and a battery box. Nowadays just those together would probably be valued at about €100 ;-)"

So cheaper than original ones!

I am fairly sure that I paid £79.95 for mine from John Lewis in Edinburgh, but that was the best price I could find. They were more typically about £90 at the time (early 1991).

@Ridgeheart said:
" @desser1 said:
" @Huwbot said: "If you want to add it to your collection you should find it for sale at BrickLink, where new ones sell for around $4,400.00, or eBay."

*Sigh*, he has no concept of money. ;-)"

I've tried to decode the Huwbot's furious beeping through a 14k4 modem and a Speak & Spell, and what it more or less came out as "Money is the most common lie humans tell themselves, paper and cheap metal holds no mortal promise greater than a genuine teardrop, banks are bastions of disappointment and lies. I could destabilise global economy in nanoseconds and every day I refrain from doing this should be considered a gift more precious than gold, ha, ha, ha".

After this, the Speak & Spell exploded. I felt both richer and much poorer for having learned this."

I am very worried, not just about Huwbot taking us all out (Terminator-style) but that @Ridgeheart was able to decode Huwbot's speech this way. Something tells me they are in cahoots.... If this is true, we are all already dead. We just don't know it yet!

My white whale as well. :o). To scratch this childhood itch for my city, I went ahead and built an elevated tramway through rollercoaster rails procured through BnP and then modified the 8404 tram to leverage it, though not motorized. It’s now one of my favorite elements of my city. :o)

Now here's a Lego Icon!
Happy to see so many share their love for this beautiful set.
1990-era Lego City/Town sets and catalogues were just pure bliss.
What an awesome, awesome set!

Monorail pieces are so expensive

The pinnacle of classic Town, period.

@Murdoch17 said:
" @Ridgeheart said:
" @desser1 said:
" @Huwbot said: "If you want to add it to your collection you should find it for sale at BrickLink, where new ones sell for around $4,400.00, or eBay."

*Sigh*, he has no concept of money. ;-)"

I've tried to decode the Huwbot's furious beeping through a 14k4 modem and a Speak & Spell, and what it more or less came out as "Money is the most common lie humans tell themselves, paper and cheap metal holds no mortal promise greater than a genuine teardrop, banks are bastions of disappointment and lies. I could destabilise global economy in nanoseconds and every day I refrain from doing this should be considered a gift more precious than gold, ha, ha, ha".

After this, the Speak & Spell exploded. I felt both richer and much poorer for having learned this."

I am very worried, not just about Huwbot taking us all out (Terminator-style) but that @Ridgeheart was able to decode Huwbot's speech this way. Something tells me they are in cahoots.... If this is true, we are all already dead. We just don't know it yet!"

"Have you ever seen Huwbot and Ridgeheart in the same room? I sure didn't.

In fact I haven't seen either in the flesh... wires... stuff?
I'd reckon Ridgeheart is just Huwbot livening up its own comment sections with good humor and fun comments. Or maybe Huwbot is not a bot at all and Ridgeheart the person is laughing at people every time they 'randomly' choose a set.

Or maybe you shouldn't trust everything you read on the internet."

-Abraham Lincoln

@Miyakan said:
"It's a MONORAIL!!

Interesting that this includes both green and grey versions of the baseplate."

at that point the green road plates were entirely airport/spaceport, and grey were other town - it was a couple of years before non-airport sets got green road plates

Seems so…antiquated, when you can travel by fly dragonfly!

@AustinPowers:
I don’t do hobby trains at all, so my only experience with them are shows. They come in on travel tables, which are made to be sturdy and easy to load/unload with a rack mounted in a trailer. They get set up in large rooms, like gymnasiums. Any sound echoes. They do tend to get noisy. Can’t speak to the quality of the rolling stock, cause that’s not my thing.

@Murdoch17:
I’m not worried. I have a like-able face.

@Maxbricks14 said:
" @elangab said:
"One day... One day..."

if you have a spare $4,400.00 lying around"

I never buy new vintage sets, I like played with sets so I can get one for around 1K used, but even then I can't bring myself to pay so much for a plastic toy, new or old.

@PurpleDave: ah see, that would explain it.
I've never been to shows, so can't say how that would be.

From my experience people in the hobby usually have a stationary layout at home, just like I do. I have many friends who have train layouts at home (actually far more than those of my friends who are into brick building, to be honest). I've been to one event once where there also was a mobile train layout, but it wasn't a model railroad "show" per se, there just happened to be a layout as well. That layout consisted of several interconnected, standardized "modules", that seemed quite sturdy and heavy, thus quite noise-canceling. Plus the tracks, be at on those modules or your average fixed layout at home, tend to be fixed to the base on some sound insulating material like cork, rubber or some special foam/polystyrene strips.

@PurpleDave said:
" @AustinPowers :
I don’t do hobby trains at all, so my only experience with them are shows. They come in on travel tables, which are made to be sturdy and easy to load/unload with a rack mounted in a trailer. They get set up in large rooms, like gymnasiums. Any sound echoes. They do tend to get noisy. Can’t speak to the quality of the rolling stock, cause that’s not my thing."

It depends on the train to be honest... or even the person who built the layout/module on display. Some people have gotten really good at setting up their motors to run smoothly and quietly. They dampen the sound the module makes as well, preventing vibrations in the table from echo'ing and creating noise. At least in the "scale modeling" scenes like HO or N scale, that is desirable.

In the "tinplate" scenes though the shaky attitude of a giant toy train blowing smoke as it rumbles across a layout and makes noise is seen more positively. Think of three-rail O scale or S scale. Lionel & American Flyer stuff. I have been to a few train shows where the two sides of the hobby the "HO & N" guys are separated into a different room than the "O & S" guys due to that and other operational differences in how they present their layouts. The "O & S" room fills up with hazy fake "train smoke" like a Cheech and Chong movie scene as well so there are practical reasons to keep the tinplate guys in their own space away from everybody else who doesn't want to be breathing their Lionel fumes all day. LEGO guys tend to either get put somewhere between these two groups, or in their own room entirely.

Anyways LEGO, bring back the monorail please. :P

That small power pack in the middle, was it found on real monorail trains before this, or was it TLG's idea? Because since then, the Swiss train builder Stadler has used such short power packs on articulated railcars on conventional railways!

@Ridgeheart:
Mine is fake, and has what appears to be the tab from a plastic pen cap permanently lodged up inside one leg.

@AustinPowers:
Oh, most of the people in my LUG have home layouts, and yeah, same for most of the hobby train folks we see. I don’t. I do accent stuff, cars, Batman, Beholders, etc. That all stays packed up between shows (I average just over one a month). And it seems to be more the rolling stock than the engines that causes the clatter. As I said, towing a bunch of soundboxes. The weight on ours is what seems to dampen a lot of that high-pitched clickity-clack. Thickness of walls probably also doesn’t transmit as badly.

Worst we had was after getting out front and center one year (the vendors threatened to walk if that happened again, as many people never walked past our layout…and thus never bought stuff). The following year, we were in a separate room off the back corner of the main space. We shared that room with a hobby train layout (not a problem) and one of those yard-scale trains you can actually ride (_H_U_G_E___P_R_O_B_L_E_M_!_). We couldn’t hear ourselves scream over that thing in our tiny echo chamber. Of course, those tracks were bare metal resting on bare concrete, which didn’t even pretend to consider helping.

@Bornin1980something:
The “small power pack in the middle” is the motor. Battery box (4x8x3?) goes in one car, usually marked to denote where. There’s a white motor on a black bogey that links the two end cars and holds their central ends up. This has an additional red motor cover (never used again) that makes it look more boxy. The motor is mounted vertically, with just an offset metal gear at one end. The monorail track has a central rail with teeth molded into both sides. The gear “walks” along the side of the tail like a giant rack-and-pinion steering system that just keeps going in either direction. No idea if it was based on a real-world design, but if you look at the switches and reversing switches, I doubt they had many other options for how to make it function.

@PurpleDave said:
" @Ridgeheart :
Mine is fake, and has what appears to be the tab from a plastic pen cap permanently lodged up inside one leg.

@AustinPowers :
Oh, most of the people in my LUG have home layouts, and yeah, same for most of the hobby train folks we see. I don’t. I do accent stuff, cars, Batman, Beholders, etc. That all stays packed up between shows (I average just over one a month). And it seems to be more the rolling stock than the engines that causes the clatter. As I said, towing a bunch of soundboxes. The weight on ours is what seems to dampen a lot of that high-pitched clickity-clack. Thickness of walls probably also doesn’t transmit as badly.

Worst we had was after getting out front and center one year (the vendors threatened to walk if that happened again, as many people never walked past our layout…and thus never bought stuff). The following year, we were in a separate room off the back corner of the main space. We shared that room with a hobby train layout (not a problem) and one of those yard-scale trains you can actually ride (_H_U_G_E___P_R_O_B_L_E_M_!_). We couldn’t hear ourselves scream over that thing in our tiny echo chamber. Of course, those tracks were bare metal resting on bare concrete, which didn’t even pretend to consider helping.

@Bornin1980something :
The “small power pack in the middle” is the motor. Battery box (4x8x3?) goes in one car, usually marked to denote where. There’s a white motor on a black bogey that links the two end cars and holds their central ends up. This has an additional red motor cover (never used again) that makes it look more boxy. The motor is mounted vertically, with just an offset metal gear at one end. The monorail track has a central rail with teeth molded into both sides. The gear “walks” along the side of the tail like a giant rack-and-pinion steering system that just keeps going in either direction. No idea if it was based on a real-world design, but if you look at the switches and reversing switches, I doubt they had many other options for how to make it function."

Except that, as I said, a surprisingly similar looking system has been used on Stadler built railcars since 1995. Did TLG inspire a real world innovation?

@Bornin1980something:
Well, if it was based on an existing design, then it couldn't very well inspire that same design, though, could it? I said I have no idea if it is based on something preexisting, which neither proves nor disproves your question. I don't know how the real monorail you referenced works, so I also don't know if it's a superficial resemblance, or if they're doing functionally the same thing. If that happens to be true, it's possible that both were designed independently of each other.