Funicular - History

History

The oldest funicular is the Reisszug, a private line providing goods access to Hohensalzburg Castle at Salzburg in Austria. It was first documented in 1515 by Cardinal Matthäus Lang, who became Archbishop of Salzburg. The line originally used wooden rails and a hemp haulage rope and was operated by human or animal power. Today, steel rails, steel cables and an electric motor have taken over, but the line still follows the same route through the castle's fortifications.

The first railway in England with wooden rails was probably made for James Clifford, lord of the manor of Broseley. He was working coal mines there by 1575 and had a wagonway delivering coal to barges on the River Severn by 1606. This is after the first record of a railway in England, the Wollaton Wagonway, but seems to be earlier.

In the 18th century, funiculars were used to allow barge traffic on canals to ascend and descend steep hills. An early example were the three inclined planes on the Tyrone Canal in County Tyrone that were in use as early as 1777. They were used primarily in the early 19th century, especially during the height of the canal-building era in the 1830s in the United States. Such railways operated by allowing water in feeder canals at the top of the plane to drive a turbine, raising or lowering a canal barge along a steep slope.

Examples of hydropower inclined-plane railroads in the United States included the Morris Canal in New Jersey, which connected the Delaware River to the Passaic River using 23 planes, as well as a series of locks along the gentler gradients. The Allegheny Portage Railroad, part of the Pennsylvania Main Line Canal, built in 1834 with ten planes as the first railroad across the Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania, was steam powered.

Modern funicular railways operating in urban areas date from the 1860s. The first line of the Funiculars of Lyon (Funiculaires de Lyon) opened in 1862, followed by other lines in 1878, 1891 and 1900. The Budapest Castle Hill Funicular was built in 1868-69, with the first test run on 23 October 1869. In Istanbul, Turkey, the Tünel has been in continuous operation since 1875 and is both the first underground funicular and the second-oldest underground railway. The oldest funicular railway operating in Britain dates from 1875 and is in Scarborough, North Yorkshire.

One of the most famous funiculars was the Great Incline of the Mount Lowe Railway in Altadena, California, designed by Andrew Smith Hallidie of San Francisco cable car fame. The Mount Lowe Railway combined its funicular, raising passengers 2,800 feet (850 metres) up the steep side of Mount Echo (elevation 3,500 ft (1,100 m), with electric narrow-gauge trolley systems at each end (the Rubio Canyon line was standard-gauged after being acquired by Henry Huntington's Pacific Electric Railway). The Incline had three grade changes, the lower end at 62% easing to a 48% at the top, and the cars were designed to adjust to the grade changes for the comfort of their passengers. It had three rails to reduce the width of the formation and the materials required, though a complicated cable routing system was needed at the passing track.

The eastern United States had several incline railways, most engineered by the Otis Elevator Company of Yonkers, New York (today a subsidiary of UTC in Connecticut). Perhaps the best example was the Mount Beacon Incline Railway in Beacon, New York, the steepest funicular Otis built in the northeast. It had an average gradient of 64% and a maximum gradient of 74% and operated for over 75 years. It was destroyed by fire in 1983, and a not-for-profit society is currently working toward its restoration.

The funicular on Mount Vesuvius inspired the song Funiculì, Funiculà, composed in 1880. That funicular was wrecked repeatedly by volcanic eruptions and abandoned after the eruption of 1944.