"Micropolis, the building set that never stops growing," read the Mego catalog. There were 5 different Micropolis building sets released and the Microrail City was one of them. Released in 1978 as a very large boxed item, the city sets were designed to stimulate a childs creative ability, and at the same time, make their fingertips very sore! Based on the snap together building panels included with the Microman Build Base play set, the Micropolis city sets could be assembled in any configuration you could think up. The basic idea was to connect each panel with small gray connectors and build structures that resembled the ones on the packaging. Each set came with a large sized instruction sheet map that acted like blue prints for each building section. You could lay each panel out on the map, and then begin the arduous task of snapping each on onto each connector. Each panel contained roughly 12 5mm holes, and had small recessed surfaces to snap the square connectors into. The connectors had a small bend in them, and contained 4 dimples. The bend allowed the connector to fold over for corners or be rigid for walls, depending on which way you attached it to the panel piece. This was the "exclusive snap-action two-way Microhinge"!
  
 
Microrail City contained 3 basic structures; the 2-piece building set and the monorail track. The building structure was the IPHQ set, and contained all the same pieces, a control room and dome tower. This whole particular set had 232 parts, and had these basic components: square panels, triangle panels, octagon panels, domes, chairs, girders and an elevator. The few features that set Microrail City apart from the regular IPHQ was indeed the monorail, but it also came with a monorail car and a bunch of extra accessories. The monorail car was basically the Stratastation car motorized body unit, with a new vehicle body mounted on top. With the vehicle body facing forward, the motorized unit was placed backward underneath. The chassis was battery powered, and had an on/off switch on the side.

 
Under the chassis was the 3-speed lever, slow, neutral and forward. Small black "fender" pieces held the larger black wheels with rubber tread under the car, and onto the body, and ran along side the rail. A black plastic rear bed fit over the battery compartment, and a small roller unit fit under the rear of the chassis to hold the car onto the rail itself. When the lever was switched on, the car wheels would move, turning the larger black wheels that were on the rail, propelling the car along. Other decorative pieces for the monorail car included a set of the Stratastation chrome accessories molded in white, and the set also contained the black 22 piece accessory connectors.
 
The monorail was made up of 4 straight and 6 curved interlocking gray track pieces. The rail was held off the ground by 10 yellow rail legs, via the 5mm peg/hole system, and could be used many different ways, as they also fit into the building panels as well. These legs also had a slit through the center, and 2 pieces could be combined into 1. As usual, the only limitation was the child's imagination!
  

prototype as shown in the pamphlet

  

The Micronaut pamphlets show an early prototype of the Microrail City, called the Micropolis Monorail set, and the Mego catalogs show a closer to the released version prototype that shows white track pieces. The Micropolis building sets did however look very cool and space aged when built, and were hours of fun…because they usually took hours to assemble!