Canadian Domain Ride

Discovered by	vitalfilms
Created	Feb 21 2011
Recent status	Abandoned
Category	Other
City	Scarborough, Ontario
Location #	2431

The <b>Canadian Domain Ride</b>, or Toronto Zoo Monorail, definitely the big tourist attraction at the Toronto Zoo. The Canadian Domain Ride started service in 1976 and was a four car train, if you will, that drove on a concrete guide-way. The CDR had rubber tires which it drove on, and got power from the guide-way system. Thus making it not really a monorail but considered an AGT{Automated Guide-way Transit}. The ride would travel around to different sections of the zoo property. Some of these section{Domains} weren(a)t reachable from the footpaths in the zoo. Only moose, white-tailed deer, wolfs, and elk were viewable from the monorail. The CDR ran until 1994 after the final straw was drawn due to several brake failures. The last accident happened on a day where there was a larger than normal attendance at the zoo. A train was approaching a station and it lost power going up a hill. After loosing power it had rolled backwards down the track towards the previous station and collided with another train. There was a total of 30 people injured and a single law suite. Today the concrete guide-way still stands strong in parts of the zoo as well as parts of the Rouge Valley. The sections that are located in the Rouge will most likely never be torn down due to conservation regulations and by-laws. The animal domains and care centers also still remain in the sections of the ride that spans through the Rouge. During the summer months it is very hard to see the monorail through the thick brush where as in the winter months the monorail sticks out like a sore thumb. The Canadian Domain Ride is definitely a part of Ontario history and it has been forgotten. Many people have been on this ride when it was up and running{I know I have been} and wish it still was around. Even though this location isn(a)t really all that exciting to see now, it definitely is a must see location in my books!

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