What is a funicular railway?

A funicular railway combines the technology of an elevator and a train. But how do they actually work? Learn more about these fascinating railways -- and how old they are -- in this episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:31):
I am Marshall Brain with today's question, what is a
funicular railway? A funicular uses the technology of an elevator,
in other words, a cable pulling a car up, and
the technology of a railroad, which is a car on
a track. Devised in the fifteen century, is a way
of getting people and things up steep hillsides. The funicular

(00:52):
now is more likely to carry skiers to the top
of a mountain in the United States that are often
referred to as incline railways. A conventional train could never
travel up such as steep incline because the steel train
wheels don't have enough traction against the steel rails. Trains
that do climb mountains go up tracks that spiral around

(01:13):
the mountain or go through many switchbacks. You might be wondering,
then why not build a train with rubber tires instead,
They might have enough traction to make it up the hills.
The reason trains have steel wheels and tracks is to
minimize rolling resistance to its absolute lowest level. This is
a force that tends to slow wheeled vehicles down. It

(01:35):
comes from the weight of the vehicle squishing the tires.
But even with rubber tires, it would be tough to
get enough traction on a steep slope, especially if it's
raining or snowing. The funicular conquers these problems in a
very elegant way. First, the car has pulled up the
mountain by a cable, which means that traction is no
longer an issue. The wheels just guide the car up

(01:57):
the mountain. They don't provide any of the pulling power
are But the true genius of the funicular is that
it uses two cars at the same time, one on
each side of a top pulley. At any one time,
one car is balancing the way to the other. The
descending cars weight helps pull the ascending car up the mountain,

(02:17):
and the ascending train keeps the speed of the descending
train from going out of control. There's still a motor
powering the pulley, but it only has to provide enough
force to overcome the difference in weight between the two cars.
Usually the way of the passengers is different and overcome
any friction in the system. At the kit stein Horn

(02:38):
Glacier in Austria, two cars carry skiers up and down
the mountain on a single cable that forms a loop
around a pulley at the top of the mountain and
then a passive pulley at the bottom. The kit stein
Horn funicular runs on electricity, which is supplied from a
power station at the top of the mountain. An electric
motor at the top keeps the cable moving. There's a

(03:00):
passive pully at the bottom of the mountain that provides
tension to the loop of cable. The Austrian funicular has
a single set of tracks going up the whole mountain,
except for a small section in the middle where it
splits into a double track. This is where the two
cars can pass each other. Building a funicular is quite
a feat because the track has to be laid either

(03:21):
on a steep mountain side or on a trestle that
rises from the side of the mountain and provides a
smooth platform. The Kistein Horn is ten thousand, four or
thirty meters tall. The tunnel that the funicular travels through
is eleven thousand, five hundred feet or thirty five hundred
meters long. It was a huge project to build this railway.

(03:46):
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