Yesterday I went to ride and photograph the Great Orme Cable Car in Llandudno in North Wales; it reopened for the 2021 season in May. Unfortunately, for reasons unknown, it wasn’t operating yesterday… (perhaps too windy 💨🚡).
Time for a thread anyway…
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The town of Llandudno sits on flat land between hills inland and a headland known as the Great Orme. The cable car lower station is situated in Happy Valley, just above the town’s pier.
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Outside the station are some nice facts about the system, which opened in 1969 and has operated almost every year since then:
The original cars are still used and I think the original operating equipment too; it all feels *splendidly* retro!!
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I took a stroll up through the delightful gardens of Happy Valley to get some pictures
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At the top of Happy Valley is SkiLlandudno’s dry ski slope, also not operating that day. I’m not good at skiing but the toboggan run here is great!
I think this is the longest, and highest above ground, span of the cable car.
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The cable car rises over a hump and then runs fairly level for a while.
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This support structure is so small it feels like you should be able to touch the cabins if they were running!
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This is as far as I had time to walk, but from here you can see the line right to the summit building, and also the
@GrtOrmeTramway
funicular’s halfway station and line to the summit.
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The tramway is also fascinating, so I walked back down the tracks. It opened in 1092 and operates in two sections, with the winding house between them in the halfway station.
The upper section is like a conventional funicular running on ballasted tracks, but…
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…the lower section runs in paved surface all the way. Above the passing loop it runs alongside the road, and below that it runs in the roadway.
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The tracks on this section *just* qualify as interlaced; the two lines share just a flangeway!
For the 2021 season, the line begins operation…. tomorrow 🤦🏻♂️
This is the steepest section of the line and is used for the annual test of the automatic over-speed braking system.
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The passing loop; the yellow wedge in the lower points is removed before operation begins.
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Just below, the line crosses the road with traffic lights which automatically change to give the tram a proceed aspect.
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The next section of road is narrow and twisty!
This being a funicular, the driver on the front of the tram only has control over an emergency stop system, which sends radio signals to the controller in the winding house.
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The lower station gets used for car parking when the tram isn’t running!
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The lower station, Victoria, has a pleasing overall roof.
The cars currently in operation are the original ones from 1902, numbered 4, 5, 6 and 7! 1-3 were vans which could originally be pushed ahead of the trams uphill and transferred between the two sections.
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Although neither line was running today, luckily they were when I visited in 2009!
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So, let’s travel back to 2009! Here’s the view up from the cable car’s lower station.
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Inside the lower station are some spare cabins. Unlike more modern systems, the cabins are pushed manually from the arrival platform to the departure platform!
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A cabin ready for ‘launch’! Unlike more modern systems where a series of rubber tyres speed the cabin up to match the speed of the cable, here gravity is used! The cabin is pushed to a downhill-sloping rail and when released, runs downhill gaining speed and then joining the cable
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Looking across the ski slope. Yesterday I walked the path to the right of the ski slope and onto the rocks at the top right of this picture.
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There’s that support where a person on the ground feels they could almost touch the cabins!
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Inside the summit station, with the drive motor and the back-up diesel engine in case of power failure.
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