Brennan's Gyro train recreated!

[Kirk]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNDtK6pPKvo

with good English subtitles
Fascinating

[the Earl of Whirl]

Yes, very fascinating.  I was especially humored by the monorail train running around the top of a cup!!!

[ta0]

Actually, the mechanism shown on the video is not the one of Brennan's car. This one has a gyro with a vertical axis (disk horizontal) while Brennan's had two gyros with horizontal axes (disks vertical). The setup in the video is more similar to the stabilizers in ships or perhaps the Scherl's car that Wikipedia describes on the gyro monorail page.

Crabtree's book has several pages on the Brennan monorail. It worked by having a mechanism that accelerated the precession caused by the tilting of the gyros and therefore made the gyros stand up again, like a top. It had two gyros spinning in opposite directions and mechanically connected so they are forced to precess in opposite directions. This setup meant that when the car took a curve the precession of the two disks will cancel each other.

[Iacopo]

In 1967 a car with two wheels was made, there was a flywheel keeping it balanced. I don't know how the balancing system works but it's cool.  The idea was to reduce the fuel consumption, having only two wheels, (there was an oil crisis at that time).

https://youtu.be/TTCVn4EByfI

[Kirk]

This one has a gyro with a vertical axis (disk horizontal) while Brennan's had two gyros with horizontal axes (disks vertical).

Some time back I read that Brennan's car had a servo system to drive the gyros.  Have you read what type of sensor(s) were used?  I would guess an pendulum type inclinometer. That would account for the tilting in turns that we see in photos of his car.   If I recall correctly he uses pneumatic cylinders to drive the gimbals.