Will cable cars like the ones in San Francisco make a comeback to cities that want light rail but are really hilly?
How many cities did or do cable cars operate in now or in the past ?
Highly unlikely. Cable-car technology was replaced by electric streetcars beginning around 1900. Cable cars are good on steep hills but don’t handle curves very well, they are also maintenance-intensive.
No. They will not come back. There are so many more better technologies available today.
ROAR
Even San Francisco debated decades ago as to whether to retire the cable cars. In the end they decided to keep them since they’re a part of the citys history and a famous attraction.
But for everyone else, it’s a technology that’s come and gone.
On the very steepest hills, they do continue to have a function – it’s called a funicular.
Traditional Systems
USA
Built and operated
- San Francisco CA - 8 cable car lines, 2) Chicago IL - 3 lines, 3) Philadelphia PA - 1 line 4) Kansas City MO - 6 lines, 5) Cincinnati OH - 3 lines, 6) New York NY - 3 lines, 7) Los Angeles CA - 3 lines, 8) Binghamton NY - 1 line, 9) Hoboken NJ - 1 line, 10) St Louis MO - 5 lines, 11) Oakland CA - 2 lines, 12) Brooklyn NY - 2 lines, 13) Omaha NB - 1 line, 14) St Paul MN - 1 line, 15) Newark NJ - 1 line, 16) Grand Rapids MI - 1 line, 17) Pittsburgh PA - 3 lines, 18) Seattle WA - 5 lines, 19) Denver CO - 2 lines, 20) Butte MT - 1 line, 21) Souix City IA - 1 line, 22) Spokane WA - 1 line, 23) Providence RI - 1 line, 24) Portland OR - 1 line, 25) Washington DC - 2 lines, 26) San Diego CA - 1 line, 27) Clevland OH - 1 line, 28) Baltimore MD - 2 lines, 29) Tacoma WA - 1 line
Projected not built
- Dalas TX - 1 line, 2) St Joseph MO - 2 lines, 3) Boston MA - 1 line, 4) Minneaopolis MN - 1 line, 5) Millwaukee WI - 1 line, 6) Lincoln NB - 1 line
Other Countries
- Dunedin New Zealand - 5 lines, 2) Melbourne Australia - 1 line, 3) Sydney Australia - 3 lines 4) London England - 2 lines, 5) Birmingham England - 1 line, 6) Matlock England - 1 line, 7) Glasgow Scotland - 1 line, 8) Edinburgh Scotland - 1 line, 9) Douglas Isle Of Man - 1 line, 10) Paris France - 1 line, Lisbon Portuhal - 3 lines
Source: The Cable Car in America by George W. Hilton
Wikipedia
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Chicago had (depending on what you mean by lines) 3 cable car companies but had 10 routes or what I would call lines. This was the largest system in America if not the world.
I should have written “companies” not “lines”. (although Hilton calls each company a “line”) There were 62 cable companies in 28 cities. (Brooklyn listed seperately in the list is a borough of New York)
Hilton wrote: " The largest, and on the whole, the most inportant American cable system was the Chicago City Railway" - which is just one of the three companies in Chicago.
However looking at the maps, I think that San Francisco followed by Kansas City may have had larger overall cable car networks. The various routes of the companies in SF (8 companies) and KC (5 companies) form nets covering a wide area. The routes of the three Chicago railways are more linear radiating from the Loop. Hilton doesn’t say which city had the largest network overall. The maps are reproduced to different scales (although the SF and KC maps are very close and SF clearly has a larger overall network than KC) so it would take quite a while to accurately compare the cities by measuring the lengths of the various routes. A quick search did not find the information on the Internet.
For a location with really steep hills, I’m sure that a present-day light rail system would prefer some kind of rack to a cable. The rack could be depressed in a slot in the pavement, with a cog that could be lowered from the car to engage it. Lots easier to maintain, since all the moving parts would be on the car, not in the street.
Chuck
New York had cable cars? I had no idea. There’s no mistaking the conduit-fed lines for them is there?
It’s always possible that in photos one might mistake a cable car slot with a conduit electric streetcar such as what Washington DC and some New York City lines had, but yes New York and Washington, did have cable cars.
I forget which book mentioned it, perhaps William Middleton’s Time of the Trolley, or perhaps it was a different author’s book on cable cars, but I remember reading that cable cars complemented horse cars, and cities would have both. That is, some cities converted a few of their horse car lines to cable, but not their entire network, because during that time between 1878, when Hallidie opened the first San Francisco cable car line, and 1888, when Sprague opened the first succesful electric trolley line in Richmond Va, the horse car companies would use whichever of the 2 modes worked better for a given line, since there were some situations where cable was an improvement over horse. But electric traction was such a much bigger improvement over both cable and horse that after Sprague proved its practicality it was very difficult for anyone to justify using either of the older modes.
How would the cable have been powered back then? A central steam plant I would assume. Maybe with a walking-beam engine? Any info out there?
Walking beam engine would probably be too slow. Here is an illustration (said to be from 1882) that shows one way the engines could be arranged. Note the considerable rotating inertia – the engines were run up to constant speed, and the ‘shocks’ of grip-on and grip-off would have a minimal effect on the speed of the cable line.
Naturally a method of driving the cable independent of the shaft speed of a steam engine would be preferable, and we find the San Francisco system converting to electric drive of the cable ‘in the decade after the 1906 earthquake’. Here is a view of the winding machinery with electric power. (This equipment is from the most recent ‘repowering’, in case you recognize it as more modern-looking.)
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Buslist
Chicago had (depending on what you mean by lines) 3 cable car companies but had 10 routes or what I would call lines. This was the largest system in America if not the world.
I should have written “companies” not “lines”. (although Hilton calls each company a “line”) There were 62 cable companies in 28 cities. (Brooklyn listed seperately in the list is a borough of New York)
Hilton wrote: " The largest, and on the whole, the most inportant American cable system was the Chicago City Railway" - which is just one of the three companies in Chicago.
However looking at the maps, I think that San Francisco followed by Kansas City may have had larger overall cable car networks. The various routes of the companies in SF (8 companies) and KC (5 companies) form nets covering a wide area. The routes of the three Chicago railways are more linear radiating from the Loop. Hilton doesn’t say which city had the largest network overall. The maps are reproduced to different scales (although the SF and KC maps are very close and SF clearly has a larger overall network than KC) so it would take quite a while to accurately compare the cities by measuring the lengths of the various routes. A quick search did not find the information on the Internet.
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Interesting views- Judging from the mezzanine in the winding plant I suppose they have public tours? Also, In S.F. the cables are only pulled one way,right? In the old picture, it looks like they go both ways. Complex! Thnking about it, how does the car grip onto the cable on curves? I assume the cable rides on a large sheave or several sheaves to get around corners. I remember reading about how in S.F. they have a gripman with a lever in the centre of the car, the gripping is done by wood blocks onto the cable and the blocks are replaced every day in the shop. But the cornering thing is what I just don’t know.
"The procedure by which a cable makes turns was conceived in the early years of cable expansion throughout the City. At first, lines like the Clay Street Hill Railroad and the California Street Railroad were simply straight routes without any turns. This was the standard until 1880, when a new and often-expensive innovation made turns possible along a route. Prior to this time, companies like the Ferries & Cliff House employed only “let-go” or “drift” curves, where the grip released the cable and coasted around the turn. Of course this was only practical where two streets descended as the cable car approached an intersection.
"Then in 1883, the Sutter Street Railroad introduced pull curves, invented by George Duncan for the Dunedin & Roslyn Tramway Company of Dunedin, New Zealand. This type of curve could be installed at any intersection, regardless of street physiognomy. The pull curve involved a series of many small pulleys holding the cable in place as it makes the turn. When the car approaches, the grip is pushed away from the pulleys and guided by a chafing bar set above and outside the pulleys, negotiates the turn. After the turn is completed, the cable returns to its usual position on the pulleys.
“This type of curve is recognizable by the series of access plates abutting one another around a turn.”
From the Cable Car Museum on Mason St. in SF. [url=http://www.cablecarmuseum.org/the-grip.html]Here is their page on the grip, which is also important in recognizing how ca
I agree that if I was specing the system a rack system would be far more preferable to a cable system. Several advantages to a rack systen, assuming no street running that you described. First there are no additional moving parts, just a gear arrangement on powered axles, and secondly each vehicle can operate at its own required speed, not constrained by the speed of the cable.
We in North America, I guess, tend to think of rack railroads as tourist things since our only 2 are just that (Mt. Washington and Pike’s Peak). But of course there are lots of revenue passenger rack railways, espically in Switzerland. But one example comes to mind that has many characteristics of a light rail line. This is in a very pleasant suburban neighborhood in Budapest. I’v had the pleasure of riding it. Enjoy.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayW5CkypL2k&sns=em
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Pittsburgh Airport has a railroad car people move that was built by Adtranz that uses a cable to shuttle people back and forth
Thankyou. You have more patience than I do.
Using the scale shown on the Chicago Map I figured that the total length of three companies combined was about 42 miles. 447,446 feet is 84.7 miles of cable so our calculations are close.
I started to measure the San Francisco lines, but decided it would take more time and effort than I was willing to spend.
I looked up the populations of the 100 largest US cities from the 1890 Census. Chicago was the 2nd largest City with a population of 1,099,850. San Francisco was 8th with a population of anly 298,997. Even if you include the population of the other Bay Area Cities, no doubt the population of the area would still be dwarfed by Chicago. The only other Bay Area City that made the list, Oakland had a population 48,682. While the respective systems served the hearts of both Cities, it is likely that the ridership in San Francisco was much smaller than the ridership in Chicago. The Ch