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Monorail Refurbishment

Uniformity is fine - if you're an insurance company and you're painting your head office. Or if you're the army. But this is a theme park.

Imagine if Disney decided to settle on lime green as a colour for their brand. And then slopped that same colour over every monorail station, the entrance façades of their parks, every ticket booth, the statue of Walt and Mickey, all the lamp posts on Main Street, every bin in the park, every fence in the park and anything else that needed a repaint.

Another step in the cheapening and downgrading of Alton Towers all this "uniformity". May as well paint the monorail track black whilst they're at it to match most of the coasters.

Whatever next? Closing loads of food outlets and painting the façades of Towers Street in plain primary colours?...........
 
In the close up shot the colours are overblown - see how saturated the red trellis colour looks versus the wide shot. To me it looks like it's the same purple colour used on the ticketing buildings on the entrance plaza.
 
Trooper Looper said:
Double post sorry, but it looks like the new coat will be a dark blue instead of a Dark purple. I'm in favor of this to be Frank!


From: https://twitter.com/dean8001/status/1600543895544205313?t=mqWU7km7gj25Gpj4NjRY2g&s=19
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Purple or blue, it just shows you from how faded the red is on the picture shows you how badly it was needing TLC to begin with.

Then the question of getting air gates or not...I highly doubt it personally though with a Nemesis and Duel overhaul and possible return of Sub Terra, I'd even be tempted to say it's not far off to speculate. That said even if a miracle happens in which airgates are built then there is much more to do such as a total overhaul of the trains and replace the voltage to a much more cheaper and eco friendly type. If either of those happen I'll eat my hat.
 
They won't bother with air gates while the monorail is in the state it's in. They'd cost an absolute fortune and require some pretty substantial work to install. With the monorail limping through season to season at the moment, there's no guarantee they'd actually get their money's worth out of them if it were to die a death in a couple of years too.

Until they can a) decide whether or not they're keeping it or going with an alternative mode of transport longer term and b) secure the funding for substantial refurbishment and/or replacement it'll remain as a member of staff opening and closing the gate. It's not great from an operations perspective, but it does the job and doesn't require a massive upfront investment for a system that's not guaranteed to stick around.

With everything going on elsewhere with Duel and Nemesis, I can't see the money forthcoming this closed season.
 
The monorail has been in such a state these last few years I'm already missing it. I used to love walking to the station in excitement and up the ramp past the beautiful mural on the wall to wait on the platform for a train to pull up to take me on a tour of the magic I was about to experience. I'd then arrive at the grand entrance plaza ready for opening.

Next season it'll be walking up to a purple building, to wait for about an hour next a purple breeze block wall for a member of staff to open a purple gate to board a hanging train, that I can't see out the windows of, to exit into another purple station, to enter a purple entrance plaza (late), for a fun filled day of walking to the (black tracked) attractions that remain in the park past purple lamp posts, purple fences and MDF boards covering buildings that once housed food outlets and shops.

That or walk past back areas and gravel. What a downgrade. This important piece of park infrastructure needs sorting urgently.
 
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Danny said:
It also looks hideous, and is just a reaffirmation that Towers will just paint and paint and paint over problems.
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Ironic, I remember from years ago Towers wouldn't give a lick of paint for anything, look at Nemesis before Towers Loving Care came along and yet here they are painting things up like there is no tomorrow and yet no one is happy.

Personally I don't really have an opinion on what colour the station should be but honestly the park can't win in which they do some up keep we're never happy...even if the likes of Oblivion and Smiler all got a lick of paint for the new season I'd bet your bottom dollar someone would have a grievance about it such as the low opinion we just seem to permanently be stuck in though honestly given what's happened over the years, could you blame anyone other than Merlin?
 
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