It only cost him $1,000 to buy the whole train.
"In 2015, Gabe Emerson called up the Minnesota Zoo and asked to buy their monorail. It had been decommissioned two years prior and the zoo, apparently, didn’t know what to do with it," write Aaron Gordon.
"Emerson, a 36-year-old Alaska native who is COO of a small property management company, moved to the Twin Cities for graduate school and wanted the monorail because he was tired of pitching a tent every time he visited his friend’s rural property. He wanted something sturdier and permanent, yet more unique than an RV or camper. At first, he wanted to buy a plane fuselage, but could only find them in airplane junkyards in the southwest desert."
The story that follows goes into a lot of detail about the process of acquiring, moving, and readying the habitation, with an interlude from the raccoons, and more than enough references to The Simpsons.
FULL STORY: t the Guy Who Bought a Monorail For $1,000
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City of Albany
UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies
Mpact (formerly Rail~Volution)
Chaddick Institute at DePaul University
City of Piedmont, CA
Great Falls Development Authority, Inc.
HUDs Office of Policy Development and Research