Pipsqueak Monorail

West Henrietta, New York

In 1968 the Rocket Express Company installed a kid-size monorail inside Rochester's downtown Midtown Plaza mall. The two-car train would slowly traverse the perimeter of the Mall's indoor atrium (the loop took about three minutes). Children loved it so much that it ran for nearly 40 years. Adults sometimes rode it, too, but it was a tight squeeze.

The monorail's last trip was on Christmas Eve 2007. Seven months later the entire mall closed, and it was bulldozed in 2010.

The monorail languished in storage for over a decade, but survived. In 2018 Rochester gave it to the New York Museum of Transportation, where it was unveiled in December of that year. The museum has locomotives, fire trucks, and all sorts of horse-drawn and motorized vehicles. It also offers the only trolley ride in New York State, but the technical hurdles needed to reanimate a 1960s monorail proved insurmountable. There are no more rides, even for kids; the monorail is a static display.