Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume I

LOWER TERMINUS OF THE WETTERHORN AERIAL RAILWAY. THE WETTERHORN ELECTRIC AERIAL RAILWAY. A DECIDEDLY interesting feat of rail- way engineering was recently carried out on the precipitous slopes of the Wetterhorn, in Switzerland. Here has been built a unique aerial railway for the trans- portation of tourists up the giddy sides of the mountain. The topographical features were such that the construction of a surface railway was out of the question except at enormous cost, while the route would have been tortuous and lengthy, winding up the mountain face and entailing the heavy cutting of galleries and tunnels for the track. Plie TV etterhorn Electric Aerial Railway, as it is called, may be said to combine the broad principles of the ordinary aerial cable system and those of the suspended railway invented by the late Herr Eugen Langen, now in successful operation between Barmen and Elberfeld, in Germany. In the last-named railway the car is suspended from and runs on a rigid rail. In the Wetterhorn system the rigid track is represented by two stout cables placed one above the other. Upon these is mounted the trolley, comprising two pairs of wheels disposed exactly one above the other in a vertical plane, and a body occupying the space between the two cables,