Cable car (railway)

[5] The rope available at the time proved too susceptible to wear and the system was abandoned in favour of steam locomotives after eight years.

The collar-equipped cables and claw-equipped cars proving cumbersome, and the line was closed and rebuilt to operate with steam locomotives.

In 1873, the Clay Street Hill Railroad, which later became part of the San Francisco cable car system, was first tested.

In Australia: the Melbourne cable tramway system operated from 1885 to 1940 and was one of the most extensive in the world with 1200 trams and trailers operating over 15 routes with 103 km (64 miles) of track; while Sydney had two cable tram routes - Milsons Point to North Sydney (1886-1905) and King Street Wharf to Edgecliff (1894-1905).

Many people at the time viewed horse-drawn transit as unnecessarily cruel, and the fact that a typical horse could work only four or five hours per day necessitated the maintenance of large stables of draft animals that had to be fed, housed, groomed, medicated and rested.

The speed at which it moves is relatively constant depending on the number of units gripping the cable at any given time.

Gripping must be applied evenly and gradually in order to avoid bringing the car to cable speed too quickly and unacceptably jarring passengers.

In the case of manual systems, the grip resembles a very large pair of pliers, and considerable strength and skill are required to operate the car.

However, this advantage is totally negated by the relatively large energy consumption required to simply move the cable over and under the numerous guide rollers and around the many sheaves.

Approximately 95% of the tractive effort in the San Francisco system is expended in simply moving the four cables at 15.3 km/h (9.5 mph).

In the case of steep grades, however, cable traction has the major advantage of not depending on adhesion between wheels and rails.

Because of the constant and relatively low speed, a cable car's potential to cause harm in an accident can be underestimated.

During the rush hour on San Francisco's Market Street Railway in 1883, a car would leave the terminal every 15 seconds.

Other examples of cable powered street running systems can be found on the Great Orme in North Wales, and in Lisbon in Portugal.

A San Francisco cable car on the Powell & Hyde line
View from a cable car in San Francisco
Winding drums on the London and Blackwall cable-operated railway, 1840
Cable Driving Plant, Designed and Constructed by Poole & Hunt, Baltimore, MD. Drawing by P.F. Goist, circa 1882. The powerhouse has two horizontal single-cylinder engines. The lithograph shows a hypothetical prototype of a cable powerhouse, rather than any actual built structure. [ 1 ] Poole & Hunt, machinists and engineers, was a major cable industry designer and contractor and manufacturer of gearing, sheaves, shafting and wire rope drums. They did work for cable railways in Baltimore, Chicago, Hoboken, Kansas City, New York, and Philadelphia. [ 2 ]
A San Francisco cable car travels along California Street in the city's Financial District.
Machinery driving the San Francisco cable car system
The cable slot lies centered between the two rails of the track, providing an ingress for the grip, 1970.
Cable tram and trailer on the St Kilda Line in Melbourne in 1905
A Seattle cable car in 1940, just before service ended. Seattle was the last city in the U.S. to abandon all its street cable railways, with the last three lines all closing in 1940, leaving San Francisco as the only U.S. city where cable cars continued to operate. [ 15 ]