The UK's last aerial ropeway uses no power, moves 300 tonnes a day, and will be gone by 2036.
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Published 2021-07-12
Thanks to all the team at Forterra: www.forterra.co.uk/
Thanks to Dave Martin for the idea!
Edited by Michelle Martin (@mrsmmartin)
Filmed safely: www.tomscott.com/safe/
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All Comments (21)
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It'd have been an obvious choice to put a camera on a bucket. And I did! But as you can see from the video, we were battling intermittent rainstorms all day, and unfortunately the shots didn't work here. However, I hope you'll enjoy next week's 18-minute-long video, "An Unedited, Rain-Soaked Ride on Claughton's Aerial Ropeway".
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The quarry manager sounds exactly what I'd imagine someone who works in a quarry would sound like.
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Can you imagine the amount of fuel savings, labor hours ( truck drivers ) and lack of pollution this ropeway has been responsible for over its lifetime? Well done to the engineers of yesterday.
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the fact that a computer, presumably trained for hours to solve this exact problem, said “nah you guys had it right” is awesome
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My late father worked at a mine in the northern Pennines in the 50’s and 60’s. Not only was their aerial ropeway used for transporting the rock, he also used it to get to work from the family home at the bottom of the fell each day by riding up in the bucket. Some of the metal and concrete footings are still visible near the mine.
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It's poetry when a Northerner describes anything industrial.
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Tom could tell me that the literal fountain of youth was located in the north west, known to a small population of immortal villagers, and I would absolutely believe him
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"unless money is constantly spent to keep it in working order, it'll decay into an unsafe blot on the landscape' you perfectly summed up everything kept for heritage value - people think everything should be kept but few are willing to spend the required upkeep costs.
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When I was younger (6-11) I built a Lego version of this. It did not work well because it was difficult keeping the timing right. I had no idea that this ropeway existed until now and it is cool to see that something I thought of when I was a kid using my imagination, ended up being something that is used in real life.
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There is something extra special about engineering marvels whose pre-computer designs are on-par with what we can engineer today.
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Actually it's not gravity, its the commanding voice of the quarry manager that makes the buckets move
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This is genius. Old engineering still going strong. If it isn't broken, then there's no need to fix it. Marvelous.
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The "Infinity Train" in Western Australia is also gravity fed, designed to charge batteries as it descends loaded from the inland mines to the coastal ports. The charged batteries then propel the empty train back up the hills to the mine. The train weighs about 34,000 tons, is about 3km long, traveling down from 600m elevation (mine) to sea level (port). They figure on saving about 84 million liters of diesel per year.
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The fact that the computer design matched the design from a century ago is truly astounding. It reminds me of a quote from a comic, Crécy, that went "These things are going to look primitive to you, but you have to remember that we're not stupid. We have the same intelligence as you. We simply don't have the same cumulative knowledge you do. So we apply our intelligence to what we have".
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The physics pedants are going to have fun with "uses no power"
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100 year old British Aerial Ropeway ingenuity is amazing, it's always been green and is still productive. It's an inspiration for the rest of us in the world.
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I must point out that at least two companies still make this: Leitner-Poma group and Doppelmayr-Garaventa group. These things still exist and work well, and are still used in certain environments.
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Let's be honest, we all kind of want to ride in that thing.
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"It's 100 years old" "A bucket has never been known to come off onto the road in the last 50-60 years" I want THAT story.
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This thing needs to be preserved simply for how significant it is.
