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Train
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Rope Drives
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Funiculars
Cable railways are still in use throughout the world in the form of funiculars - rope hauled systems where cars are attached to a cable. The advantages of such systems are that they can cope with steep gradients and undulating territory and once built are long lasting, extremely energy efficient, pollution free, require minimal staff and incur low maintenance costs. Though principally used in mining and in alpine situations, funiculars are a cost effective solution to moving people and goods in many leisure or heritage environments.
National Garden Festival Wales 1992
The 1992 National Garden Festival Wales in Ebbw Vale, South Wales, faced a difficult problem of transporting its hundreds of thousands of visitors around a steep and hilly former steelworks site. Conventional transport solutions just could not cope. The difficult and tortuous route, which involved many changes of gradients and small radius curves, had also to accommodate extremely high fluctuating visitor flows.
WGH provided a unique solution to the problem in the form of a cable-powered funicular railway, the first to be built in Britain since 1902. Two British built three-car 96 seater trains, enabled up to 1,000 people per hour to be carried along the twisting 1,000 metre route, enabling visitors to reach Garden Festival Wales leisure and picnic areas at the top of the hill, both in speed and comfort.
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Rope Rollers
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Tracks
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