Disneyland’s celebrated Monorail fleet has served the park well since 1959. We’re currently on the Mark V, the third version to be used at Disneyland. Mark VI is currently in use at WDW. But the years have taken their toll on the fleet and its time for another upgrade to the system. Last year the park put out RFBs to the major monorail manufacturers, but they either couldn’t meet Disney’s demands and price constraints, or they just didn’t have time to fit Disneyland in their manufacturing schedule (as was rumored to be the case with Bombardier, Disney’s original partner for the WDW Mark VI models and the new Las Vegas Monorail). This has resulted in Disneyland taking the unusual step of reverse engineering the current Mark V in order to modernize the fleet on their own.
MiceAge’s Kevin Yee has posted some amazing photos of Monorail Orange (scroll about a third of the way down), the sacraficial lamb selected by Disney, in process of being deconstructed. I have not heard if Bob Gurr, one of the original designers of Disneyland’s Monorail, has been tapped to help with the reserve engineering.