aerial ropeways_ automatic cargo transport for a bargain

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Aerial ropeways:automatic cargotransport for a bargainby Kris De Decker, originally published by Low-tech Magazine | JAN 26, 2011

These days, we use themalmost exclusively totransport skiers andsnowboarders up snowslopes, but before the1940s, aerial ropewayswere a common means ofcargo transport, not only inmountainous regions butalso on flat terrain, withlarge-scale systems alreadybuilt during the Middle Ages.

Cargo tramways can be fullyor partly powered by gravity, and some deliver excess power that can be utilized togenerate electricity or to drive cranes or machinery in nearby factories. Someinnovative systems have been constructed in recent years.

Before we start, it is important tonote that aerial ropeways (alsoknown as aerial tramways orcableways) can be divided in twogroups: monocable and bicablemechanisms. In a monocablesystem, one endless rope servesto both support and move thecarriers in transit. In a bicable (ortricable) system, separate ropessustain these functions: one ortwo static support ropes, the "carrying ropes" or "track cables", and one or two lighttravelling "haul ropes".

Ancient and medieval ropeways were of both varieties, while modern ropeways(from the 1850s onwards) were initially exclusively monocable systems. Later,bicable systems took over almost completely. At the end of the 19th century, bothropeway methods were also applied to canal transportation (see the article ontrolley canal boats), with monocable systems used for cable trains.Bicable mechanisms are much better suited if the track spans larger distancesand/or has steeper grades. If only one endless rope would be used on a track whichincludes a long span or a steep grade, it would become necessary to make the

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entire double length of the moving rope strong enough for the special strain thatappears on that spot. Increasing the size of the rope affects the dimensions of thesupports, sheaves and other fixtures throughout the line, adding to the costs. In abicable system, the stationary carrying cable can be locally graduated to the strainsit has to bear.

Ropeways in ancient times

Ropeways have been used for more than 2,000years, transporting both passengers and goods. Thefirst sign of their use comes from the rugged Asiaticcountries of China, India and Japan, where it isspeculated that they may have been in operationsince 250 BC. Men used rope to cross ravines,rivers and river-gorges, initially transferringthemselves, hand over hand, with the bodysuspended by a crude harness. The harness eased the load and allowed a rest asthe loop was slid along the rope track.

The next application was to pulloneself back and forth in abasket or cradle, usually with afew belongings in tow. This wasmade possible by means ofthinner cords fixed to the frontand the back of the basket, or bygravity in case the arrival pointwas at a lower height than thestarting point. The empty sling orbasket was then drawn back toits original position by a smallercord attached to the back asbefore.

Sometimes, the rope was threaded through ahollow piece of bamboo before being attached, sothat the person could slide down the rope withoutburning their hands.

All that was needed to build a ropeway was a rope,knots to tie the rope to a rock or tree or anchor on both sides, and a bow and arrowto shoot the rope across. After the invention of the crossbow by the Chinese,heavier cables could be shot over longer distances. Sometimes the rope wassupported on simple wooden trestles.

Ropeways were also used totransport pack animals. Inversely, pack animals were sometimes used to pull theropeway. These early aerial ropeways were the forerunners of later technologiessuch as the suspension bridge and the elevator. They were also the closestapproach to aerial navigation at the time.

Ropeways in the Middle Ages

One of the first mention of ropeways in medieval times appears in the "Taiheiki", aJapanese historical epic written in the late 14th century. It relates how a Japanese

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emperor escaped via ropeway over a valley when surrounded by enemy forces. InEurope, initial reference to the use of ropeways can be found in Bellifortis, aweapons catalogue from 1405. A 1411 book is the first to show a drawing of aropeway.

Between1411 and1440, whentechnologiessuch as watermills,windmills andharbourcranes became increasinglypopular, references to both

monocable and bicable operations increased. In South America, aerial ropeways totransport gold have been reported as far back as 1536.

The 17th century saw an increase in design sophistication. Venetian FaustoVeranzio illustrated a refined bicable passenger ropeway in the "Machinae novae",published in 1615 and 1617. It consisted of a wooden box in which the passengersrode, travelling on pulleys over a fixed rope (second picture from the start). Thevehicle was propelled over the river by the occupants pulling themselves along bymeans of this slack loop. Dutchman Wybe Adam erected a successful large-scaleoperational system in 1644, which is described in the Danzig Chronicles (pictureintroduction and picture below).

Adam engineered a continuously circulating ropeway to carry the earthworksmaterial in baskets for a hilltop fortress in Danzig. Ropeways were also constructedby monasteries built high on pinnacles, where they were used to lift supplies andvisitors.

Ropeways from the 1850s onwards

From about 1650 to 1850, no further progress was made. The technology hadreached its maximum potential at the time, limited by the strength of the availableropes. This all changed with the arrival of the much stronger wire rope in the mid-nineteenth century, which led to the most successful period of aerial ropeways inhistory. Another breakthrough was the standard coupling designed in the early1870s by the Austrian von Obach, which allowed the cars to be disengaged andreattached to the trackway. Last but not least, new power sources appeared: firststeam engines, then electric motors.

Motive power

Until the end of the nineteenth century, aerial tramways had been powered byhumans (sometimes using a windlass or a treadwheel), by animals (mostly ginsworked by horses or mules), by waterwheels and/or by gravity.

Thelast



option was (and is) only available in mountainous areas: the descending carriersdeliver all or part of the necessary power to haul up the ascending carriers. If thedescending cargo is sufficiently heavier than the ascending cargo, and the angle ofdescent is great enough, the ropeway could be kept running without any additionalpower input, making it a full-fledged zero emission transport mode. The speed ofthe descending carriages was governed by means of hand or water poweredbrakes.

Even when the ascending load was heavy, gravity could be used to transport cargoup the mountain; where water was available at the highest point of the ropeway, itwas possible to run materials up alone, employing the descending carrier as acounter-balance filled with water. The system is reminiscent of those used by someearly 1900 cable trains.

Net producer of energy

In some gravity powered lines, where the surplus power delivered by thedescending cargo was larger than the power required to haul up the ascendingcarriages, the cableway could be a net producer of energy. Power could be taken offat any point along the track and utilized to drive nearby machinery, for instancedriving ore crushers, pumps or sawmills. A ropeway thus offered the additionalpossibility of powering neighbouring factories solely by gravity. Before the arrival ofelectricity, this excess energy was transmitted by mechanical means (wire ropes).Present-day cargo ropeways (see further below) use the excess power to generateelectricity.

Extremely efficient

The

introduction of electricity as a power generator did not make aerial ropewaysunsustainable - far from it. An electrically powered aerial ropeway is one of themost efficient means of transportation available.

It offers all the advantages of electric transmission (energy-efficient, relativelysilent, power can be produced by renewable sources) while eliminating the manyproblems that come with batteries and charging stations (as is the case withelectric cars). In mountainous regions, the electric motor can be assisted by gravitypower from the descending carriers, further improving efficiency.

Furthermore, an aerial tramway offers some additional benefits in powerconsumption compared to other sustainable options such as cargo trains, cargotrams (streetcars) or trolleytrucks. Firstly, energy delivery is more efficient with afixed electric propulsion system in a single terminal than with transmission overlarge distance by wire. Secondly, because there is no interference with surfacetraffic, a constant speed can be maintained, again improving energy efficiency.

Applications of cargo ropeways



Comparatively, few aerial ropeways were built for passenger transportation at theturn of the 20th century, where their primary function was solidified as a means forcargo transportation. Applications were many and diverse, and they occurred allover the world.

There is no information to be found on the total amount of ropeways that were oncein existence, but some sketchy bits of data give us an idea. A source from 1899names 900 aerial ropeways of a certain technical type in operation worldwide. Aproduct catalog from 1909, still well before the heydays of cargo ropeways, namesa figure of 2,000 ropeways worldwide of a certain brand (the Bleichert system),aggregating over 1300 miles in length and transporting 160 million tons annually.Evidently, this was not an obscure technology.

Warfare

Early modern ropeway technology was led by the Europeans,particularly Germany and the Alpine countries - Austria,Switzerland, France and Italy. Aerial ropeways wereextensively used for warfare in the Alps between the early1900s and 1945. Italy used ropeways in the war against Turkeyin 1908. During World War I and World War II, aerial ropewayswere widely used in the mountain battles between Italy andAustria. Almost 2,000 ropeways were operated by the Italiansand over 400 by the Austrians, with most of them beingportable.

They could quickly be disassembled, moved using pack animals,and assembled somewhere else. Military ropeways were usedto reinforce difficult terrain with troops, supplies, howitzers,ammunition and fortification building materials. They were also a short termsolution for destroyed bridges and other water crossings, or to lower casualties tohospitals in stretcher carriages (as an alternative to specially equipped packhorses).

Mining

Many cargo cableways were utilized for mining purposes - the first ropeways in theUS were for transporting materials when mining in the West was booming. Thereare many references to ropeways that carried ores (gold, silver, iron, copper), coal,stone, slate, clay, sand, granite, quartz, lime, phosphate rock and brownstone.These goods were usually transported from the mine to a crusher, a railway, a shipor (in the case of coal) a steam engine. Terminals could be set up on a short sectionof rail, and gradually moved towards the other terminal as the material wasremoved from before it.

Agriculture

Another important application was the carriage of agricultural products: fruits (likebananas), cereals (like wheat), and other plantation produce like cotton, tea-leaf orsugar cane. These goods were mostly transported from the fields to a mill orrailway station. Aerial ropeways were in use on sugar plantations in Demerara,Jamaica, Mauritius, Martinique, St. Kitts, Guatemala, Australia and elsewhere, forthe delivery of canes to the crushing mills.

The arrangement shown on the right was extensively adopted in Mauritius: severalwire ropeways driven from the same point discharged on the same cane carrier. Agreat advantage was that the canes were delivered in a continuous stream direct onto the cane carriers and in quantities that were at no time large enough to demandredistribution in feeding the mill - somewhat similar to today's just-in-timeprinciple. Only one man took care of the discharge of the carriers.



Inmany

cases anagriculturalropeway wasemployed incombinationwith cartage,the canes beingbrought tocertain points along the line by thecarts. Ropeways were used for thecarriage of beetroot to the sugar

factories, in Holland for instance, where the system was used on flat land.

Wood products

The technology was popular for the transport of wood and wood products: logwood,cordwood, sawed timber, charcoal, wood pulp, paper pulp and paper. These wereusually transported from a forest to a sawmill or from a sawmill to a railwaystation. Aerial tramways were applied by builders to convey bricks and materials tothe desired points. A ropeway could carry cement from the kilns to the works, andthe empty carriers could be used for conveying up coal to the kilns.

Factories

Another application was thetransport of materials withinfactories - this could be anything,from manufacturer's supplies, torefuse, materials in process ofmanufacture, merchandise of allkinds, and particularly productsrequiring careful manipulation,such as explosives, liquids orglassware. The ropeways in factories were generally short, and the cables could befrequently supported at many points from brackets fixed to the walls of adjacentbuildings, saving costs.

Ropeways were in operation in many print works, linoleumworks, mills and other factories. Examples were at artificialmanure works near London (the line passed over buildings,dwelling-houses and yards full of workmen) and linoleum worksnear Middlesex (where the line - driven by water power - passedover a river and many of the workshops and roofs). Ropewayswere used for connecting lines of railway at opposite banks ofrivers where bridge building would be unduly costly or difficult.

One of these lines was constructed to pick up wagons with their loads, traverse andput them on track at the other side and vice versa. On a much smaller scale, at theend of the 19th century, miniature wire ropeways were introduced in shops fortransporting cash.



Harbours

In manufacturingestablishments, cableways wereoperated to distribute materialtaken from boats or cars tocertain storing places in theyards. Aerial ropeways wereused by ship owners for theloading and unloading of theircargoes and/or for the bunkeringof fuel (coal for the steamengine).

Ropeways provided a means of forming piers forloading and discharging materials when ships andlighters were forced to lie at some distance fromthe shore because of the shallowness of the water.

One of these ropeway piers, at the Cape de VerdeIslands, measured 1200 feet (365 metres) in length,of which 960 feet extended along the beach, and

about 240 feet at right angles to the longer section to the end of the pier, where thecoal was received and dispatched. The ropeway carried 15 to 25 tons per hour ineither direction, and the motion of the rope was also utilized in working cranes ateach terminal for raising or lowering coal. All this was powered by a 16 HP steamengine. The erection of the site took a mere three months. Similar installationswere built in New Zealand and South Africa.

Aerial ropeways were also tested to transport coal between ships on the sea(below).

Receptacles



For every material carried by a tramway, there was a specially designed carrierreceptacle. Below are some examples for minerals, produce, manure, coke, sacksof flour, textile goods (protected from the weather), cement, petroleum, wine andbeer. Some of these carrier receptacles were unloaded by striking a catch, causingthe bottom to open or the whole receptacle to capsize or tip up. Loading was mostly(though not always) done by hand.

Length, speed and capacity of the lines

Length and capacity of aerial tramways gradually increasedthroughout the century. In 1911, aerial ropeway lines weretypically 1,000 to 15,000 feet (305 to 4,600 metres) long, with adaily cargo capacity of 15 to 200 tons and speeds of around 2 to5 mph (3,2 to 8 km/h). Some gravity powered installations werefaster, with speeds around 15 to 30 mph (24 to 48 km/h), buthigher speeds were considered to be a negative influence onwear and tear. Weight of the individual loads varied from 25 to 375 kilograms.

Motive power, if applied, was generally from about 2 to 15 HP. The fall was betweenzero (almost horizontal lines) and 4,000 feet (1,220 metres). Working staffamounted to 2 to 5 people. Some lines were built parallel to each other in order toincrease cargo capacity (the maximum capacity of a single ropeway was about 800tonnes per day). Some early ropeways were longer and more powerful. TheUsambara ropeway in Africa was 5.6 miles (9 kilometres) long and transported treetrunks weighing up to one tonne each (picture above). At its highest point, theropeway was 130 metres above the ground.



Argentinian ropeway (1906-1927), picture by Patricio Lorente.

The Garrucha ropeway, an installation at iron ore mines in Almeria, Spain, was 9.75miles (15 km) long. The construction of the line took only 6 months. It had a dailytransport capacity of 420 tons (working ten hours per day), powered by a 100 HPengine. Similar tramways were built in mines in Basque country, north-westernSpain (two pictures below). The Transylvanian wire ropeway, an installation at blastfurnaces in Hungary transporting charcoal and ore, was nearly 19 miles (30,6 km)in length, and had a fall of almost 3,000 feet (915 metres). Capacity was around 800tons per working day. A ropeway in Argentina (picture above), in operation from1906 to 1927, was 21.3 miles (35 km) long.

The 1920s saw the construction of even longer ropeways. The longest in Europewas the line erected in 1925 in Granada, Spain. It was used to carry goods from thecity to the harbour in Motril over a distance of 39 kilometres. The infrastructureconsisted of 240 towers and 7 stations. The 300 vehicles with a loading capacity of700 kg each travelled at a speed of 3 metres per second. After the ropeway wasbuilt, the port of Motril quickly attracted more traffic. In 1929, an additional 200vehicles were added to the line. Interestingly, the Granada ropeway was a publicservice - anybody and everybody could make use of it. Operations ceased in 1950,following the demise of local industry and agriculture.



The longest cargo tramway in the world during the 1920s was used for thetransport of coffee from Manizales to Mariquita, Colombia. More than 800 vehiclestravelled on the 72 kilometre line (45 miles), which was supported on more than400 towers. The ropeway was opened in 1923 and remained in service until 1961.

The 1930s and 1940s saw the construction of the longest ropeways ever built. TheSwedish Forsby-Kping limestone ropeway was the longest in Europe at the time ofconstruction (42 km or 26 miles, in operation from 1939 to 1997), but this recordwas beaten by the 96 km (60 miles) long Norsj aerial tramway, also in Sweden. Ithad 514 towers and 25 tension stations. This tramway, which was in operation from1943 to 1987, was built in just 370 days and is the longest cableway everconstructed. The Massawa-Asmara ropeway in Eritrea, built by the Italians, was 75km (46.5 miles) long and was used from 1937 to 1941. In 1959, a 76 km longcableway with 858 support towers started operation in the Republic of Congo. Itremained in use until 1986, operating 24 hours per day.

Transport infrastructure

Ropeway towers couldbe constructed fromtimber or iron and weregenerally between 100and 300 feet (30 to 90metres) apart, althoughmuch longer spans werepossible if necessary. Inbicable ropeways thetension in the trackcables was produced by

weights applied at one of the terminalstations. However, in longer lines it became necessary to apply additional tension atintermediate points.

For this purpose tension stations were built at distances of about 3000 to 6000 feet.The cars passed from one section of the cable to the next by means of interveningrails - so that no interruption occurred in the continuity of the track. This meansthat there are no limits to the length of a ropeway: each (longer) ropeway consistedof multiple sections that could be considered as separate ropeways.

The same technique was applied to "angle stations", which were used to make acurve in a ropeway (tension stations and angle stations could be combined - see theillustration above, right). The largest drawback of an aerial tramway, also relevanttoday, is that it can only be built in a straight line. Every angle in a ropeway requiresthe erection of an angle station, which raises capital costs. However, in general, fewangle stations are needed because ropeways can be constructed above mostobstacles.

Moreover, each tension and/or angle station can also double as a loading orunloading station. Goods could even be sent along different routes via a switch ifmore ropeways met at a single point. The picture above shows a ropewayswitchyard of a German coal plant (described in a 1914 book) where three lines of



carriers converge.

To guard against the risk of accident from thepremature discharge of a bucket or other causewhen crossing public highways or railroads, wirenets were usually suspended between supportson either side, or structures especially erected forthe purpose. An arrangement of a shelter bridgeas required by a county council to hide thecableway where it passed over a public road canbe seen on the right.

Installing a ropeway

Instalment of ropeways in the mountains was not an easy task. The long rope wasusually shipped on reels holding several thousand feet, but where the upper part ofthe line was inaccessible to wagons, the rope, like the rest of the machinery, had tobe packed so that it could be loaded on mules. Each animal carried about 250pounds (115 kg) - including the piece of slack rope fifteen or twenty feet longconnecting its load to the next one in the rear. This piece was usually held up by awalking person so that it would not drag on the ground.

Accidents happened, of course. A 2 mile long ropeway in Mexico for conveying woodto a mill had a fall of 3,575 feet. The constructor notes:

"The transport of this rope was, owing to the rough nature of the country to betraversed, a matter of very serious difficulty. It was accomplished by dividingthe rope into ten lengths, each length made up into seven coils, with anintermediate length of ten feet, and each of the coils was loaded upon the backof a mule, the entire train being composed of 70 mules and three men beingprovided to each seven mules, or thirty men altogether."

"During the conveyance of the section of rope to the upper terminal anaccident occurred which was productive of very considerable delay, anddemonstrated the difficulties attendant upon the operation. The head mule, at apoint where a rise immediately followed a steep descent, started to take therise with a rush until checked by the rope, which threw him backwards overthe bank, he taking two other mules with him, and had not the last of thesecaught on a tree, the rest of the train would have followed."



The many advantages of ropeways

Why did aerial ropeways become so successful at the turn of the twentieth century?The main reason was that they were considerably cheaper than their alternatives,be it transport by horses and carts or transport by railroad. The ropeway waseconomical in operation and required only a minimal capital outlay.

The

investment that would be entailed in a hilly country by the necessity of makingtunnels, cuttings and embarkments for a line or railway was avoided.

A cableway could be constructed and worked on hilly ground at a cost not greatlyexceeding that which would be called for on a level country. Rivers and ravinescould be crossed without the aid of bridges. Gradients quite impractical to ordinaryrailroads could be worked with ease.

One calculation showed that a ropeway only 1 mile (1,630 metres) long with adifference in altitude of 0.4 miles (645 meters), would require a railway of 15 miles(24 km) to reach the same point. Ropeways were also generally half as expensive tooperate when compared to cartage by mules, horses, and oxen.

Furthermore, an aerial tramway could be up and running in no time. Some linescould be easily moved from one place to another with comparative ease. Aninstallation of 1 mile length at a beetroot farm in Holland, with a daily capacity of 50tons, could be taken down and put up again in a fresh place in one day, by the aid of20 men, provided the distance to cart the component materials did not exceed 5miles.



Ropeways continued to work during weather conditions that would bring surfacehauling to a standstill (like floods or heavy snow, especially interesting in mountainareas) and they could be operated at night without hazards. Wear and tear wererelatively low. Ropeways did not occupy any material quantity of ground, and theintervening land between posts could be left for cultivation or other use. Terminalscould be arranged so that the material transported could be delivered at the exactspot where it was needed, saving all the expense of rehandling. One disadvantagethet ropeways had was that they were more vulnerable to high winds and electricalstorms than other transportion options.

Cargo tramways today: renewed interest

The advantages of aerial cargo ropeways are sonumerous that it is no surprise that they are -slowly - being rediscovered. Worries about globalwarming, peak oil and environmental degradationhave made the technology even more appealling.This does not only concern energy use: contrary toa road or a railroad track, a cargo ropeway can bebuilt straight through nature without harminganimal and plant life (or, potentially, straightthrough a city without harming human life). Trafficcongestion also plays into the hands of cableways,because the service is entirely free frominterference with surface traffic.

Practical Action has been designing cargo ropewaysin Latin America for some time now as an

appropriate tech solution. In this case, aerial ropeways are mostly a substitution forpack animals, as they were one century ago in Europe. In 2007, another non-governmental organization built a gravity powered cargo ropeway in India thatserves 2,000 families. It costs just 14,000 dollars and transports agriculturalproduce downhill while taking manure to fertilize the fields uphill (a very wise thingto do).

Some companies have started offering commercial cargo ropeways again. One ofthese is Femecol, a Colombian enterprise that offers relatively small-scalesolutions. But the big guys are moving, too. French company Poma, one of thelargest manufacturers of chair lifts, gondola lifts, funiculars and people movers,has constructed industrial applications of ropeways in France, Brazil, Iran and Peru.In these and in the follwing applications, aerial ropeways are mostly a substitute forcargo transportation by trucks.



The first modern Poma cargo tramway was built in 1990 in Grenoble, France. It isoperated for a cement factory and crosses a river and a motorway (pictures above).The line is 1.8 km long, climbs 121 metres and can handle 324 tonnes per hour - acapacity that is considerably higher than that of older systems (though the line israther short). Each of the 56 vehicles can hold 900 kg and travel at a maximumspeed of 18 km/h. More recently, a similar cargo ropeway was built in La Oroya,Peru for the lead, zinc and copper mining company Doe Run. It has a similar lengthto the line in France but climbs 1.65 km (pictures below). It is much slower (5.4km/h) and it has a lower capacity (70 tonnes per hour - similar to the capacity of thelarger systems built in the first decades of the twentieth century).

It should be said that the ropeway - which replaced a much older system with asmaller capacity - seems to be the only sustainable element of the mining company,because Doe Run is in hot water with local environmentalists.

Innovation: the RopeCon system

The main competitor to Poma, the Austrian/Swiss conglomerate 'DoppelmayrGaraventa Group', takes cargo tramways even more seriously. On their website,they offer cargo ropeways with lengths of up to 10 km, transport capacities of up to1,500 tonnes per hour and individual loads of 40 tonnes. A temporary, 2 kilometrelong system is being built to help in the construction of a pumped storage



hydropower plant in Switzerland. But the company also designed a new conceptthat further improves upon the cargo ropeway: RopeCon. Mining Weekly describesit as "a bulk material and unit load handlling conveyor, which combines the benefitsof well-proven ropeway technology with those of a conventional conveyor belt".

Some of the advantages over the traditional ropeway are a higher load capacity,better wind resistance, and the need for fewer towers (which makes the lines eveneasier to integrate into existing terrain). The overhead conveyor system consists ofa belt with corrugated side walls and integrated sets of wheels that run on fixedanchored track ropes, guided over tower structures. Individual sections can be builtup to a length of 20 kilometres, with a maximum transport capacity of 10,000tonnes per hour. To date, about 6 lines have been built.

The most spectacular system, which has been tested in hurricane winds of 249km/h, was built in 2007 for a Jamalco/Alcoa bauxite mine on Mt Olyphant inJamaica (picture above). It is 3.4 kilometres long and has a vertical descent of 470metres. The installation conveys some 1,200 tonnes of bauxite per hour from themine to the processing plant, saving about 1,200 truck journeys per day andgenerating about 1,300 kW per hour of braking energy, which is fed back into thepower network. The transport network thus doubles as a renewable energy plant.

Another remarkable cargo installation is the RopeCon for fiber manufacturerLenzing, which is used for the transport of wood chips from the storage area to theprocessing plant. The 665 metre long automatic transport system crosses existingplants and conveyor systems, a river and several roads with minimum towerstructures (pictures above and below). The ropeway conveys 350 tonnes per hour,and although the system does not generate energy because it is built on flat terrain,the engine output is only 53 kW - similar to that of a small car. The line wasdesigned to guarantee 100 percent availability at wind speeds of up to 130 km/h.



Since May 2008, a system on the island of Simberi in Papua New Guinea transportsgold ore over a distance of 2.7 km while using only three support towers over theentire length (picture below). The ore is transported from the mine in the interior ofthe country through the tropical rain forest and fissured terrain to the smeltingfacility at the harbour. The vertical rise is 237 metres. Transportation capacity is450 tonnes per hour and the system generates 221 kW of energy per hour throughbraking power, which is utilized in the gold refinery.

A temporary RopeCon installation was set up for the construction of a tunnel inAustria, where it was used for the transport of rock excavation material. Conveyingcapacity was 600 tonnes per hour, while engine output was very modest at 30 kW.The line was 270 metres long, with a vertical rise of 23 metres. It eliminated115,000 truck journeys.

The future of ropeways

It would be perfectly possible to construct similar lines all over the place and getmost cargo traffic off the road - not only when it comes to gold or bauxite mines. Acargo tramway could be built from a train station or parking lot outside the city to a



shopping mall, or along the motorway between two towns or cities. We could sendproduce from agricultural fields and goods from factories straight into shoppingdistricts or into a moored ship, without ever touching the ground. There would be nodelays due to gridlocks or traffic accidents. Noise and vibration would be minimal.The low energy requirements could easily be met by renewable, stationary energysources. In short, a ropeway offers all the benefits of an underground freightnetwork without the enormous capital costs.

We could even build a fully-fledged local, regional or even national or internationaltransportation network of cableways using switch stations that would be cheaper incapital and operational costs than any other alternative (including trolleytrucks,cargo trams, trains and cable cars).

Of course, yesterday's ropeways are not suited to handle today's freight loads. Forexample, today, 400 trucks of 30 tonnes each drive up and down daily betweenGranada and the harbour in Motril, Spain. That is a total load of 12,000 tonnes,while the local ropeway that was in operation from 1925 to 1950 had a capacity ofonly 210 tonnes per day (for 10 working hours). However, as noted, Doppelmayrnow offers cargo tramways with capacities of up to 1,500 tonnes per hour, whichwould be more than enough to get all trucks off the road again. RopeCon systemsoffer even higher capacities. On the other hand, lowering demand for cargotransport would defenitely make ropeway technology a more realistic option, justas lowering energy demand would surely help the greening of the energyinfrastructure.

Ropeways won't work everywhere, and they are most advantageous inmountainous or moderately level regions. This is not only because avertical rise can turn the ropeway into a power generator instead of apower consumer, but also because the alternatives (rail, road) are moreexpensive and complicated to build than on level terrain. Nevertheless,even on flat ground a cargo ropeway could be a more sustainable optionthan most other alternatives. The only motorized transport option thatseems to be able to compete with the ropeway in terms of both capacity,efficiency and cost is canal transport - even more so if trolleyboatswere used. Canal transport is best suited for level regions and thusperfectly complementary with cableways. And what about those trucks?

They are so twentieth century.

Kris De Decker (edited by Shameez Joubert)

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Sources:

"About ropeways", The Information Center for Ropeway Studies"Hercules Aerial Tram Mobility Study & Report". Investigates a wider applicationof passenger ropeways, but also has interesting information on cargo ropeways."The wire rope and its applications", 1896"Ropeways", The Elevator Museum, website"Aerial or rope-ways: their construction and management", 1911"Transport by Aerial Ropeways", W.T.H. Carrington, The Engineering Times, 1899"Die Drahtseilbahnen", 1914"Chemins de fer funiculaires - transports ariens", 1894."Wire rope tramways with special reference to the Bleichert patent system",Edmund Gybbon Spilsbury, 1890."Wire rope transportation in all its branches", Trenton Iron Co. 1896"The Bleichert system of aerial tramways", 1909"Across the Chilkoot pass by wire cable", William Hewitt, 1898"El cable Drcal-Motril (Granada)", Francisco Calvo Poyo, Universidad deGranada.



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About Kris De Decker:Kris De Decker is the creator and author of "Low-tech Magazine", a blog that is published in English, Dutch and Spanish. Low-tech Magazine refuses to assume that every problem has a high-techsolution. (Since 2007).

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"The Hallidie endless wire ropeway", California Wire Works, 1902"Un po' di storia degli impianti a fune", Associazione Nazionale Italiana TecniciImpianti Funiviari.List of aerial ropeways in the UK.El bandido que asaltaba el cable ms largo del mundo.A Spanish ropeway operating in the 1960s."The genius of China: 3,000 years of science, discovery and invention", RobertTemple"Science and technology in China", Volume IV:3, Joseph Needham.

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