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The double-track system ran 7.5 miles long originally and cost $18.6 million; the line began at the foot of the Space Needle and terminated in Westlake Center in Downtown Seattle. Ten two-car trains sheathed in light metal skins, were used for the Seattle World's Fair. The cars were designed in Italy but built in Germany. Murray Morgan discussed the monorail cars' design in his book, "Century 21: The Story of the Seattle World's Fair:" " consisted of two sections of two cars each, articulated so that the joints are observable only on the outer skin. Each car rides on powered vertical wheels with rubber tires that move along the top of the concrete rail, while other horizontal rubber-tired wheels roll along the side of the concrete rib, maintaining balance. The trains are powered by General Electric thirty two volt electric motors which permit speed of seventy miles per hour on the straightaway run, though such speeds were impractical on the short track." Morgan also noted that the Alweg Monorail was a very popular attraction at the fair, attracting great interest from foreign visitors. The Monorail's rail's were composed of pre-stressed concrete, shaped three feet wide and five feet deep. Rail sections varied in length, from 76-90 feet and weighed between 47-60 tons. Concrete Technology , Incorporated, produced the rail sections. These sections rested on poured-in-place, T-shaped supports, lifted into position by crane and bolted onto footings. (See Murray Morgan, Century 21: The Story of the Seattle World's Fair, [Acme Press, Incorporated, 1963], p. 149.) The Howard Wright Construction Company (the same General Contractor who built the Space Needle) was responsible for erecting the concrete rails and their supports.

This has been referred to as the Alweg Monorail, after its developer, Alweg Rapid Transit Systems, based in Fühlingen, West Germany. "Alweg" was an acronym derived from the corporate founder's name, Dr. Axel Lennart Wenner-Gren, who was a Swede. Alweg built one of the first monorail lines in the world, at Disneyland in Anaheim, CA, in 1959. It created a Seattle branch to manage its World's Fair operations, Wegematic, that closed in 1964.

PCAD id: 5982