Posted 10 February 2005 - 10:43 AM
The Estes Park Aerial Tramway was designed and built by Robert Heron, who became involved with tramways during World War II. The 10th Mountain Division contracted the engineering company that Heron worked for to design a portable tramway for use in Italy and Germany, and the task was assigned to him. A book entitled “The Tramway Builders,” by Philip A. Lunday and Charles M. Hampton, gives the history about the tramways and the men who built them.
After the war, Heron traveled to Europe to study tramways and became more fascinated with their design and capabilities. Because of the steep terrain, many trams in Europe do not require any towers to support their wire ropes. The entire length is a free span between the bottom and top stations. The Estes Park Aerial Tramway utilizes this design – a free span that is somewhat uncommon in the U.S. But the design affords a particularly smooth ride.
Heron also became one of the pioneering chair lift builders for the United States ski industry, and built the first double chair lift in this country.
The Estes Park Aerial Tramway opened to the public in July of 1955, an this year will mark its 49th in operation. The tram is owned and operated by Heron’s son John, and has safely carried more than 3 million people to the summit of Prospect Mountain.
A 50 horsepower motor with an 18:1 gear-reducer supplies the power which drives the 3/4 inch wire rope used to pull the cabins up and down the mountain. The two 10-passenger cabins are suspended from rubber wheeled carriages riding on 1-3/8 inch track cables.
Each cable weighs nearly six tons. At the upper terminal, the cables wind around a circular “dead man,” and then fasten to massive concrete and steel anchors buried deep in solid granite. At the lower terminal, they fasten to a 50,000 pound counterweight. The counterweights, by moving up and down slightly in their wells, keep constant tension on the cables.
The cabins are fabricated from Plexiglas and light-gauge steel. Steel is used because weight is an advantage in high wind, providing stability.
At the upper terminal, skilled operators in radio contact with the cabins and the lower terminal, control the complicated drive machinery. Dial and indicators tell speed, cabin position, motor amperage, etc.
The Chinese can be credited with inventing the tramway. Fifteen hundred years ago, they strung crude wire ropes across river gorges and crossed hand over hand. By Shakespeare’s time, the Germans had devised a true aerial tramway - windlass powered, with wheeled carriages riding fiber track ropes. These hoisted men, stone, and timber up to build the famed mountaintop fortresses, but the tramway idea faded due to lack of mechanical power.
The Swiss built the first modern passenger tramway in the Alps in 1874, and today Switzerland boasts more than fifty “teleferiques” with scores more in France, Italy, and South America. An Italian system climbs Mt. Vesuvius and, in Rio, a famous two-way tramway soars up Sugar Loaf. Often, in Europe, tramways haul cattle, food, and farm machinery - the necessities of isolated mountain village life. Resort hotels often depend solely on tramways for access and supply.
Oddly, though U.S. mining companies built work tramways before 1900, passenger tramways didn’t catch on here until the 1930s, when New Hampshire built the Cannon Mountain Tramway at Franconia Notch.
Jeff
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