Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume I

126 ENGINEERING WONDERS OF THE WORLD. THE CABLEWAY IN WINTER. as soon as cars are moving up- wards, either empty or bearing supplies for the staff of the cable- way and the CableXay. miners. When a car reaches a station, it lets go of the hauling rope of the last section, is pushed across a short level stretch, and attached to the hauling rope of the section below. When at last it arrives at the lower terminal it runs over an automatic weight re- corder, which registers the load, and is emptied into- one of a number of hoppers. Then it starts on the upward journey, and so travels up and down all day long. One of the most interesting mechanical features of the cable- way is the auto- matic gripping Automatic , . p . . Rope- device for giving . . ° ° gripping Cell* 3, hold on Device the hauling ropes. The jaws of the grips are actuated by the weight of the car itself. have the longest spans of all, each over half a mile long. Between stations 3 and 9 the ropes climb 10,000 feet in about 12 miles. In four hours a traveller on the cableway is raised from a point some 3,500 feet above sea- level, where the sun shines hotly, to an eleva- tion considerably greater than that of Mont Blanc, and finds that in this short time he has exchanged summer for winter. To the unseasoned this rapid ascent brings the soroche, or mountain sickness, which also comes to passengers on the wonderful Oroya-Lima Rail- way in Peru. When a day’s working commences, the first cars dispatched from the upper terminal are only partly filled, and the loads are increased The steeper the incline and the greater the A WATER-CAR. pull, the tighter do the jaws cling to the