Thursday, September 16, 2010

Les Avants Funicular

This funicular has been running for almost 100 years near Geneva, Switzerland. It looks like some kind of 100-year celebration may be in the works.

Eugen sent this to his sister at the Moraine Hotel in Highland Park, Illinois in 1913. It reads:
Les Avants, 14/12/13
Your brother sends you the best wishes from here.
Eugen
It's still nice here!

If you go to Lake Geneva and want to ride the funicular, you can find out more here. You can also find out more about where you can go to hear Swiss alphorns.

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9 comments:

  1. HaddockSeptember 16, 2010 at 6:41 AM

    Wow this funicular must have seen both the World War.
    May be some of the soldiers have traveled in it.

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  2. JoySeptember 16, 2010 at 2:43 PM

    It looks wonderful in the snow although the mention on the link of it journeying through the daffodils in the spring sounds a sight worth seeing.

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  3. AnonymousSeptember 16, 2010 at 3:50 PM

    If the car is built as a parallelogram to keep things horizontal/vertical on the slope as the images suggests, what happens when the track flattens out at the bottom- does everyone just fall out? Perhaps if everyone uses high altitude drug paraphernalia like the two gents on the second card, level and plumb are not quite so relevant a concept...

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  4. Christine H.September 16, 2010 at 5:38 PM

    There is some leeway, just lie with a regular streetcar going up a hill. Besides that Swiss engineers can do anything.

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  5. MescrapSeptember 16, 2010 at 6:05 PM

    Thank you Chritine. I receive your email and thank you for leaving your comments on my blog.
    You are such a nice and kind lady.

    I love this postcard, especially the writing..ehmmm...i can really recognise the words..

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  6. Aimee DarsSeptember 16, 2010 at 8:05 PM

    Funiculars are fun!

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  7. AnonymousSeptember 17, 2010 at 5:31 AM

    Can anyone guess the original (pre-faded) ink color Eugen used? Jack/Youngstown

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  8. Christine H.September 17, 2010 at 4:30 PM

    Jack,
    I'll have to track down the card and take another look, because I think it may have been written in colored pencil. Pelikan used to make lots of different ink colors for fountain pens and there was one that was lighter than violet.

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  9. AnonymousSeptember 17, 2010 at 6:13 PM

    Very unusual color, Christine, that's why I'm guessing it's a faded version of a more common commercial ink of the era. I use a fountain pen once in a while, but I'm not a big inkophile. J. Herbin, Private Reserve, de Atramentis, Rohrer and Klingner, all make a whole mess of inks for writing, highlighting, art, etc. Plus, there're the inks sold under pen-makers' names: Parker Quink, Pelikan, Sheaffer Skrip, etc. Jack/Y-town

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