#Funicular railway

[traveltash]

View from the top

The Luisenhof opposite the station also features in the novel which first alerted me to the railway. We decided to give it a miss though and stroll around the neighbourhood and admire some of the elegant houses. The time of day we chose made for lovely sunsets in one direction and the time of year allowed us a peak at the river Elbe through the leafless trees. Weißer Hirsch, the name of this…

[drprunesquallor]

Thursday Doors @ Loschwitz

Thursday Doors @ Loschwitz

Loschwitz is a posh suburb of Dresden, on the wooded slopes of the northern bank of the River Elbe. A thousand years ago, it was a wine producing area, with south-facing vineyards. In a cottage surrounded by vines, Schiller wrote “Ode to Joy” in 1785. Rather than trek up the steep slope, I opted to make the climb by the funicular railway. There is an alpine feel about the place, with…

[urhajos]

Bica Funicular Railway, Lisbon

[sonyaheaneyauthor]

Old postcard of the Kyiv Funicular, Ukraine. Between 1905 and 1917.

[postcard-from-the-past]

Nerobergbahn funicular railway in Wiesbaden, Hesse, Germany

German vintage postcard, mailed in 1905

[azvolrien]

The ride back down from the Ptarmigan to the base station (which is still pretty high above the glen below). There's no sound.

Here's a funny thing! In English, we refer to this range as 'the Cairngorms', after the mountain Cairn Gorm, which isn't the highest of the peaks by any means but is probably the most visible of them, the higher ones being further into the plateau. In Gaelic that's An Càrn Gorm, 'The Blue Cairn'. However, the mountains' Gaelic name is Am Monadh Ruadh... which means 'The Red Hills'. And now you know.

[themichigami]

sometimes, an inability to fall asleep leads to somehow building a fully functional funicular/incline railway in modded minecraft. i just have to build the stations and put the second car on its tracks and its complete, but, a nap first.

[muttball]

Old Quebec Funicular

The Old Quebec Funicular (French: Funiculaire du Vieux-Québec) is a funicular railway in the Old Quebec neighbourhood of Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. It links the Haute-Ville (Upper Town) at Dufferin Terrace to the Basse-Ville (Lower Town) at Rue du Petit-Champlain.

[snellblogs]

Cleeve Abbey, Somerset

CLEEVE ABBEY,

SOMERSET.

Blog by Lynne Pearl

It had poured with rain most of the day, but there was a gap in the clouds and the sun came out, so we made a dash for it.  We left behind Halsway House, the National Centre for the Folk Arts, which is on the road from Bishops Lydeard (Home of the West Somerset Heritage Railway, and Taunton, direct to Minehead.  Somewhere on that road we knew there was an abbey and we wanted to find it.  Just a few miles outside of Minehead we found the signs to Cleeve Abbey at Washford. 

We parked the car where it was dry and approached the area on foot.  The first building we came to was a gatehouse and there was a notice there from the ‘Almoner’ to say that this was where food was given to the poor.  In other words, until 1539 or thereabouts the monks helped the local people when they were in trouble, needed food.  It was encouraging that the virtual beginnings of a much later welfare state had existed so long ago, an ethos of giving to others less fortunate.  Then beyond the gatehouse there is nothing until one reaches a building that looks like a later farm house. A drainage ditch or water supply leads from the gatehouse to the main buildings or the ruins of them that are left. 

Although Henry the eighth would have shut this monastery down three hundred years ago, there is still the most complete cloister intact inside the grounds.  The four sides of the cloister exist and the upper storey, which is much more than in many more famous abbey ruins.  At Glastonbury the cloister does not exist but one can see breadth and depth of it by the markings of foundations in the grass where it once stood. 

There isn’t the size or grandeur of Tintern Abbey and the poetry attached to it or the fame of King Arthur’s burial place at Glastonbury but maybe that is why so much of the cloister is left at Cleeve.  The abbey is situated in an out of the way place, a farming community on the edge of Exmoor.  Probably it was left alone and forgotten.

Outside the abbey grounds the local river was running high with red brown mud from the rain.  We drove on towards magnificent Dunster Castle that overlooks the ancient Yarn Market and central square.  

Beyond that were the mysterious beaches of Minehead where Exmoor meets the sea like a Swiss mountain running down to the black rocks of the sea and the funicular railway that sits at Lynmouth, rising to Lynton above.

[emilytakesphoto]

funicular

[traveltash]

Dresden Funicular

A novel set in Dresden starts with a detailed description of the main character travelling up the steep bank of the Elbe using the funicular railway. Ever since I read that introduction, I wanted to travel on that funicular. The system to buy tickets has changed a little since the novel’s description, the ticket machine accepts cards these days, there remains a barrier to enter the…

[theromanbarbarian]

I'm so mad.

I'm so fucking mad

KATOOMBA SCENIC RAILWAY THIS IS A CALLOUT POST!

Oh, what's that? You're playing innocent? You don't know what you did? You're just "an unforgettable 310 metre route" in Australia's Blue Mountains providing "mountains of fun"? Just the blameless "steepest railway in the world"?

Bullshit! You're not the fucking steepest railway in the world. I've seen the steepest railway in the world and it's goes up the Swiss(of course it's Swiss) mountain Pilatus. 48 percent maximal gradient, runs on a toothed track and has a cogwheel that helps it run up such a steep mountain. Good Train.

Ah, but it's just the steepest cogwheel railway, I hear you say, We are not a cogwheel railway

Oh, so how do you get up that hill?

Uhhh... Cables.

You're a fucking cable railway ? Then who cares bloody steep you are? You can pull stuff up any grade on a cable, the whole fucking point is to overcome the limitations of trains that have their own engine and are bad at climbing inclines.

But, we have a Guinness world record!

Excuse me then, a fucking Guinness world record, those are definitely credible and not just a fucking ad agency. Alright let's take a look at this shit...

oh, so you're a funicular are you? Alright that's at least something... there's still plenty of engineering challenges in building a steep funicular. Because you have two cable cars that act as each others counterweight, they need a lot of upkeep in order to keep the cars balanced and are more challenging to build and design. Let me just google "steepest funicular". Wait... here it says that the steepest funicular is the Stoosbahn in Switzerland (damn leave something for the rest of us Switzerland) with a max grade of 110%. OK that's still less than you, maybe they have it wrong. Let's just look at your Wikipedia to check if you're really a funicular...

YOU'RE A FUCKING INCLINED LIFT? You know we already have regular vertical lifts, that have infinite fucking steepness? You're a fucking embarrassment. AAAAAAAAH!

Calm down... Deep breaths...

OK, let's stretch the definition of railway into meaninglessness to include inclined fucking lifts. Tell me that you're at least the steepest inclined lift...

Of course, I've got a Guinness world record.

Well forgive me if I don't trust the clowns at Guinness that don't know what a funicular is. Finding the steepest inclined lift will probably be pretty difficult, since it's such a useless fucking title. Let's see if there is anything steeper than 52°.....

You're a fucking joke, Katoomba scenic railway....

You're not a self propelled railway, you're being pulled by a cable like a cuck. You're not a funicular, you don't even have two fucking cars, like other motherfucking inclined lifts pretending to be funiculars (looking at you Montmartre "Funicular"). And on top of that you're not even the goddamm steepest inclined lift in the world. But you payed Guinness a bunch of money and now you call yourself the "world's steepest railway" all over your advertising and a bunch of lazy fuckwit journalists lapped it up to the point that you are the first thing that pops up when you google it.

You're a goddamm liar.

Fuck you.

[julieschulerart]

The Duquesne Incline. https://www.etsy.com/listing/1416562589

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Would you mind talking about the vibes in Aberystwyth? Like the university and the town and all that jazz?

Vibes: immaculate

I'm out of date on the uni now - this September marks twenty years since I first went, so there will be differences by now. But I did find it a very good uni in terms of student life and facilities, both academic and otherwise. Many good clubs and societies, a lively SU, etc

HOWEVER the town is fantastic. It's a bit of an odd one, in that the character changes dramatically between term-time and holidays - students make up something like two thirds of the population, so it's much quieter and much Welsher once they've all gone home. But even with the students, it's something like 13,000 people? Small - you can walk across it in half an hour, like. Which means it's big enough to have all the shops you need and a truly astonishing number of pubs, but small enough to still retain its Victorian seaside resort charm

Oh yeah, okay, it has:

TWO BEACHES! One is grit sand/shingle, the other is powder sand

A pier with MANY STARLING MURMURATIONS

The remains of a CASTLE

The National Library of Wales (respectful silence)

An IRON AGE HILLFORT which you can walk to

A Victorian funicular that still works which is a CLIFF RAILWAY

A CAMERA OBSCURA on said cliff and also frisbee golf. Why they thought frisbees and windy clifftops were a perfect pairing I do not know

DELIGHTFUL WOODS

There's technically TWO Cinemas but one is the Arts Centre (so shows a mix of blockbuster releases and art house things with intermittent reliability) and the other is a one-screen wonder that can only show films for about two weeks at a time, it's great

WALES COASTAL PATH ACCESS did you know you can walk the entire coast of Wales?

A STEAM TRAIN (sit on the left of the way out, the right on the way back)

Limited chain stores! Most shops in town are local-owned, and usually Welsh speaking

Also a bit of a hippy vibe, albeit not as much as Machynlleth up the road

Over fifty pubs and clubs. This is an unfeasible number for the population size

[azvolrien]

After the reindeer herd, I drove further up the mountain road for a ride on the Cairngorm Mountain Railway, which has now reopened after a long closure for track repairs. The Ptarmigan - the visitor centre at the top - actually predates the funicular, though I'm not totally sure by how much; you used to be able to ride the ski lift up to it instead, though these days I'm pretty sure they only let you do that if you're actually going skiing.