System
Because much of Haifa is built on top of Mount Carmel, the Carmelit (named after this mountain) is an underground funicular that goes up and down the mountain. The altitude difference between the first and last stations is 274 meters (900 feet). Carmelit cars have a slanted design, with steps within each car and on the station platform. Since the gradient varies along the route, the floor of each car is never quite level, and slopes slightly "uphill" or "downhill" depending on the location.
The Carmelit is one of the smallest subway systems in the world, having only four cars, six stations and a single tunnel 1.8 km long. The four cars operate as two two-car trains, which run on single track with a short double-track section to allow trains to cross.
It is not the smallest subway in the world—the Istanbul Tünel, with two stations and 573 meters long, is smaller. However, since Istanbul also has a newer and bigger (though separate) subway system, the Carmelit is sometimes still mentioned as the smallest subway in the world.
Read more about this topic: Carmelit
Famous quotes containing the word system:
“The golden mean in ethics, as in physics, is the centre of the system and that about which all revolve, and though to a distant and plodding planet it be an uttermost extreme, yet one day, when that planet’s year is completed, it will be found to be central.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“UG [universal grammar] may be regarded as a characterization of the genetically determined language faculty. One may think of this faculty as a ‘language acquisition device,’ an innate component of the human mind that yields a particular language through interaction with present experience, a device that converts experience into a system of knowledge attained: knowledge of one or another language.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“He could jazz up the map-reading class by having a full-size color photograph of Betty Grable in a bathing suit, with a co- ordinate grid system laid over it. The instructor could point to different parts of her and say, “Give me the co-ordinates.”... The Major could see every unit in the Army using his idea.... Hot dog!”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)