Moving people and freight up and down steep terrain has always been a difficult problem, and beginning in the 1860s, the funicular railway became a solution that has been tried in hundreds of locations around the world. One part elevator, one part streetcar, these counterbalanced cable railways have been built on mountaintops for tourists, on hillsides for mines, along rivers to reach ports, and in cities for public transport. Each unique setting provides its own set of challenges, and funicular designs are rarely standardized. Gathered here for your enjoyment, if you are so inclined, is a collection of images of some of these varied and intriguing steep railways.
That Escalated Quickly: Putting the Fun in Funiculars
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The Funival, a funicular railway that transports skiers to the top of the Bellevarde rock in the French ski resort of Val d'Isere, prepares to enter its tunnel through the mountain on January 11, 2018. #
Jean-Pierre Clatot / AFP / Getty -
The historic Angels Flight funicular cable cars sit wrecked after an accident on February 2, 2001, after one car went into a free fall and crashed into another below, killing one person and sending seven other people to area hospitals in Los Angeles, California. The Angels Flight funicular originally operated from 1901 to 1969 and reopened in 1996 after a a complete refurbishing. #
David McNew / Getty -
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Canal boats are transported up and down a hill along hydro-powered cable railways between waterways on Poland's Elblag Canal, a unique feat of 19th-century engineering, on July 17, 2008. Boats travel nearly 100 meters uphill or downhill over a nearly 10-kilometer (6.2 mile) stretch using a system of counterbalanced hydro-powered cable tracks running along five inclined planes, or slipways, like steps between canals. #
Janek Skarzynski / AFP / Getty -
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The barrel-shaped carriages of a funicular line are seen on the illuminated track before the opening ceremony of the Stoosbahn near the Alpine resort of Stoos, Switzerland, on December 15, 2017. #
Arnd Wiegmann / Reuters -
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A sunny autumn day in Mürren with the Allmendhubel funicular railway (Allmendhubelbahn) in the background, photographed in Switzerland's Jungfrau region on October 9, 2018. #
David Hajes Hajek / Shutterstock
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