I’ve been tweaking the nose of the monorail trying to get it to look as close as possible to my reference materials. Tonight I worked on laying out and cutting the door to the driver’s cabin. The other night I also added the headlights to the front of the nose. (Although you can’t see them in the rendering below) Next, I’ll be copying the door down the side of the body of the engine and then I’ll do the same for the windows.

Here’s a look at the progress so far:

I think since I haven’t really gotten much help with researching the details of the Mark IV, I’m going to model just the exterior for now. Maybe someone will come along and help out later.

The next step in my EPCOT Center project is to model Walt Disney World’s Mark IV monorail. But to the fact that the Mark IV has been out of service for many years, decent resources are hard to come by via the net.

The Mark IV entered service at Walt Disney World when the resort opened in 1971 and were decommissioned in 1989 (a few remained until 1990). The Mark VI series is what is currently run today. (Disneyland runs the Mark V series, although they’re getting Mark VIIs) Since my EPCOT Center model is set in 1983, I’ll be modeling the Mark IV. I have located a few basic dimensional references, but I am lacking good solid reference materials.

If anyone out there has good reference materials (drawings, close-up photos, etc) you can pass along, I would appreciate it. I’d like to model both the exterior and interior of the monorail with as much detail and accuracy as possible.

It’s time for another update. You’ll notice a few more colors in these images. I’ve “colored” a few of the areas to make them easier to distinguish from the other areas. By no means are these colors/textures/materials final.

One thing to note about this update, the monorail station is “roughed out” and I haven’t added a great deal of well, details to the model yet. While I was modeling the exit of the station I realized I didn’t have a lot of reference material. So rather than commit a lot of detail to something that is wrong, I thought I’d post what I have so far and see if anyone can confirm/deny the accuracy of the model.

Without further ado, here’s what I have so far:

EPCOT Center Monorail Station test render 01

You’ll notice a lack of glass between the ceiling “arms” that join the entrance, main and exit roofs. I’ll add those later. (Anyone have a picture of those?) You’ll also notice there aren’t any rails on the paths either. That’s one of the details I’ve left out until I’m sure the overall model is correct.

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