With the loss of lives in Lisbon yesterday evening, like you my immediate thoughts turned to funicular drive-mechanisms. But this one is personal too: I've ridden most of the cablecars, elevators and funiculars thereabouts and ~ literally ~ got the scale model and the framed print.
Funiculars are named after the Latin word for rope, and ropeway railways were long in use in industry in England for instance, from prior the Industrial Revolution. As a matter of fact there is still one running to this day from a quarry up high to the yard down below, which is already on my bucket list as it is set to end soon.
Like the passenger versions, it relied on the downward payload to assist wholly or partly with the haulage upward; so there is a tourist funicular in Somerset which includes a water-tank on either carriage, the one at the top filling it from a stream so as to be heavier than the one on the way up, thus requiring no energy at all.
This though is the most revealing pic I can find that might explain the accident, as the first thing to know about mainstream media reporting upon transport fatalities is that (a) they most want to show you the mangled bodies as that's what we like and (b) the technical insight is shit, which doesn't matter as it suits our expectations.
For me however it's annoying, because it means I have to conduct patent searches before breakfast. Among which the funicular here was refurbished in the recent past and I was always most nervous when it came to flying airliners that were fresh out of overhaul.
In the pic though the yellow pointers show the running rails and cable slot for the inbound carriage and red the outbound. The observant among you will fear a crash is imminent already, seeing as they clearly overlap. They've thought of that though and around the middle of the hill there is a section only one can pass through at a time, and situated so that there is a different length of cable for each thereabouts.
The cable is usually driven by an engine at the foot of the hill and the way it differs from a cable-car ~ whether this be up a mountain in Switzerland or hill in San Fran ~ is that carriage and cable are connected to each end of the cable, whereas cable-cars are connected somewhere along a continuous loop.
In fact the only reason the cable needs to be in a slot at all is to preserve it from the weather and to stop pedestrians crossing the road from having to step over it. But at some point in the proceedings, members of the jury, they decided to replace the stationery engine at the foot of the funicular with an electrical motor in each of the carriages, driven by an overhead supply, for reasons best know to themselves.
Ordinarily this would not work, because up hills so steep you need separate means to grip the surface and apply the necessary torque, and that is generally in the form of a rack-and-pinion. A pinion is a geared wheel and the rack also a cogged surface that is merely laid out flat so as to engage the pinion along the length of an incline.
Here is where it gets murkier, because the traction or grip that a rack-and-pinion provides is so formidable... that on some cable-drawn transport systems it is used as the essential back-stop in the form of a brake, should all else fail.
This is because steel-on-steel, as they call conventional railways, is not so good at stopping or in fact going: which is why Autumn is so perilous for commuters with its 'leaves on the line'... or indeed the episode of Casey Jones we've all seen in which he throws the loco into reverse after the brakes fail (Ed. who the fuck?).
Despite the mainstream media pinning the blame on a derailment, therefore, what came first: a cable snapping, or wheels off the track? Given it clearly hit the bend at speeds unimagined? For even had the wheels left the track and made the brakes even less effective, the ultimate back-stop would have been the dead weight of a carriage travelling the opposite way: but only were it still connected.
The saddest part, aside from all of the ensuing sadness, is that the system may yet be sanitised. Health and safety did not really feature in the design of these carriages whose lower half is of welded steel like a ship, and the upper coach-built like the horse-drawn carriages from whence they evolved; the seats wooden, people stood up, not a seat-belt in sight.
My most recent outing on a funicular was in the oil-rich city of Baku, where I took junior in order to divulge the facts of life, like how steam-engines work. It was exceedingly safe, but missing all of those missing safety features which I consider essential to its authenticity.
I rode Madrid's metro when its seats too were wooden, and though the replacement is a world apart... for me it's lost its soul, like wine in a tetrapak instead of a bottle.
p.s. I don't normally ask people to share, but do reach out to a funicular enthusiast among your cohort... there are at least five of us out there.
p.p.s. As a child atop Salzburg's funicular, when asked by my younger sibling how it worked I said they'd simply release the brake... he's never been the same since.
p.p.p.s. Best funicular-based movie: Zorba the Greek
