Mt. Lowe Railway, California

Just looking at this gives me vertigo.

You may remember Mt. Lowe from a previous post on Echo Mountain that showed a horse-drawn tram on a rather steep incline. You can read all about the Mt. Lowe Railway here. This card shows the upper part of the railway, above the Mt. Lowe Incline on the way to the Alpine Tavern.

The railway was plagued with problems, and there's little trace of it anymore, but it must have been a fun trip for people who lived close enough to Pasadena to take the ride. Here's a card showing the Great Incline and the funicular that transported passengers up Echo Mountain.

Here are the backs of the cards in the same order. The first one was written on September 1, 1930 and mentions crossing 18 bridges besides this circular bridge.

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.

Mount Adams Incline - Cincinnati, Ohio

When the architect who steals my covers goes to Cincinnati later this year, he won't see the Mt. Adams Incline, because it's not there anymore. This spectacular funicular was built in 1872, one of five funiculars in Cincinnati and the longest running of any of them.  It was built to connect the downtown with the residential areas on the hill. The Mt. Adams Incline was closed in 1948, even though at the time it was the city's biggest tourist attraction.

Today, there are still some great attractions on the hill, including Eden Park, the Cincinnati Art Museum, a few theaters, and numerous restaurants and bars. It's unfortunate that as in many other cities, car-driven transportation planning worked to effectively fragment the city by building big freeways through the middle of it.  Here's a USGS photo from a website called Cincinnati-transit net, with a yellow line showing the site of the former funicular. The website has lots of great pictures of the Mt. Adams Incline and the other Cincinnati inclines, although it doesn't look as if there have been any  posts recently.

Here's the back of the postcard:

Streetcar Sunday - What's the Difference?

I know this has been keeping you up at night. You toss and turn, wondering: "What is the difference between a streetcar, a trolley, a tram, a funicular, an interurban, and a cable car? Are they all the same?"  Not quite, but there is a fair amount of overlap. Here are some basic definitions:

Trolley

All sorts of things are called trolleys today, but a lot of them aren't really trolleys. The word trolley comes from troller, the wheel at the end of a pole that collects current from an overhead wire to power the vehicle. As far as I'm concerned, if it doesn't have the overhead wire, it's not a trolley.  Generally, trolleys also run on tracks, but there are exceptions.  There are also trolleybuses (or trolley coaches), though not very many anymore. Here's a postcard of a trolley in Brisbane Australia.

Streetcar

A streetcar is a wheeled vehicle that operates on rails. It may also be a trolley, but not always. Many definitions specify that it is powered by electricity, but that's not necessarily the case.  The first streetcars were pulled by horses, and there were also steam-powered streetcars. It is true though, that virtually all streetcars today operate on electricity.  Streetcar is the word used by Americans; people in the U.K. and many other places around the world refer to them as trams. Here are streetcars (or trams) crossing the August Bridge in Dresden, Germany in about 1910.

Tram

A tram is the same as a streetcar, except that a tram can also be suspended from a cable, in which case it is an aerial tram. In this case, Americans call it a tram too, because it is quite clearly not a streetcar. Things get a a little tricky here though because an aerial tram is really also a cable car, although it is permanently affixed to the cable. (Gondolas are also aerial cable cars, but are not permanently affixed.) Here is a great photo by Tim Jewett of the aerial tram in Portland, Oregon.

Cable Car

Cable cars are propelled by a continuously moving cable, which is often underground in a slot between the two rails. The cable is powered at a powerhouse, these days using electric power, but in earlier days with steam. The cable car attaches to the cable with a grip, which is just like a big pair of pliers. In order to stop the car, the gripman releases the grip. When he wants to start again, he clamps it down.

A number of cities in addition to San Francisco had cable cars in the early years of streetcars.  As far as I know, they were only used in cities with hills. In the days when streetcars were pulled by horses, the poor animals were often unable to pull a fully loaded streetcar up a hill. Cable cars overcame that problem, but when trolleys came along, they generally proved to be more efficient. Here's the cable car in San Francisco.

Funiculars or Incline Railways

So, what's the difference between a cable car and a funicular? Funiculars, like aerial trams, are generally attached to a cable, but they operate more like an elevator, with simultaneously ascending and descending cars counterbalancing one another. Also, funicular cars are often slanted to fit the grade. Cable cars are more likely to operate on streets, whereas funiculars have their own right of way. Here's a postcard of the Incline at lookout Mountain in Tennessee. The cars don't look like this anymore. This one looks a little like a bus; today's cars look like classic funicular cars.

Cog Railways

This is going a little off the subject, but I'll include it anyway. A cog railway usually has an engine and a passenger car. They are not linked together though; the engine merely pushes the car up the hill and brakes it on the way down. Unlike funiculars and cable cars, these cog railways produces the energy to ascend the incline, just like a train engine. The difference between a cog railway and a regular train is that the cog railway uses cogs to engage into a cog rack to provide it with traction for scaling steep slopes. A classic example is Jacob's Ladder in New Hampshire:

Here's a scary cog railway in Switzerland, but it runs on electricity:

Interurbans

Interurbans were sort of a blend between train and streetcar. As with streetcars, they traveled into towns on the main streets, but like trains, they also traveled on tracks through the countryside between cities. Interurbans were larger than streetcars and had greater horsepower, allowing them to exceed 60 miles per hour. Although they generally looked more like trains, they ran on electricity.

 Here's another one in Massachusetts.

So, these are the definitions as I understand them.  Let me know if you think I have missed something.