The Meigs Elevated Railway was an experimental but unsuccessful 19th-century elevated steam-powered urban rapid transit system, often described as a monorail but technically pre-electric third rail. It was invented in the United States by Josiah Vincent Meigs (also known as Joe Meigs or Joe Vincent Meigs), of Lowell, Massachusetts, and was demonstrated from 1886 to 1894 in a suburb of Boston called East Cambridge.