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G'Day Folks

I'm a bit of a fan of Mueller lifts (I like the tower and sheave designs, can't explain the rest). They seem to have been popular in OZ during the 60's and early 70's (similar in Nth America also from what I can tell), and I'm curious to know whether they ever moved into the triple/quad and/or detachable designs at any stage?

From what I can see of Nth American installations, doubles seems to have been about as far as they got. Is that an accurate observation?

Any info apprecaited.
Richard.
This post has been edited by Ricardo: 04 February 2006 - 04:22 AM

Whereabouts are the Australian installations?

Mueller did built a few triples in North America (Apex Mountain Resort in British Columbia has one), but never any quads. Mueller did build 4 passenger detachable gondolas though.

Did they develop their own detachable technology, or did they use someone elses? Locations?

I'm pretty sure that Mueller designed their own detachable technology, but maybe it was from GMD?. Whistler, BC and Mt. Whitter, NH (lost) had Mueller Gondolas.

http://www.chairlift.org/whitter.html

Lift Dinosaur, on Feb 4 2006, 10:34 AM, said:

I happened to work at a location on the North Coast of British Columbia. The city of Prince Rupert bought a Mueller detach gondola from a company that went bankrupt in the Prince George area. Anyways for along while this gondola had the steepest verticle rise in all of North America. We were lucky enough to have Mueller founding father vistit us from overseas while he was vacationing with his family. (thats another story)It has always been a big question for me as well. Why did Mueller lifts not progress and stay in the mainstream. I was always told that the problem was with the parent franchise in Europe which just couldn't compete with the larger manufacturers. Its a real shame obviously as they certainly made in roads in BC during the early days of the resorts that are hugely popular now.
There are some very knowledgable people concerning mueller lifts and there engineering still about so I wouldn't give up your quest for information. I know that the Gondola I made reference to earlier is now sitting in a huge dirt parking lot with a massive collection of other mueller lifts being sold for parts.
A.R.M out

Wonder why the apex triple (Stocks) doesnt have lattice towers.

They were a newer style of mueller tower i think, or perhaps the triple chair design, Both the Powder Chair and the Triple at Big White have the same style of towers. As far as i know these are the only two Meuller triples in existance, however there may be more.

Thanks, A.R.M. The history of detachable technology, patents, take-overs, etc. have always interested me. I have seen one of their old brochures on chairlifts.org the grip looks totally different than anything today.

Did the operator have to manualy pull the attach cord or what?

arialropewaymillwright, on Feb 4 2006, 12:06 PM, said:

Did Rupert replace the gondola when the meuller was removed? Do you have any pics of this gondola in operation? Also where in town was it? I was in Rupert at the start of last summer and if I go back up there this summer I would like to find the old site.

Thanks guys, thats great feedback.

book, there are two remaining Mueller's in Australia that I'm aware of
- Mount Perisher Double in Perisher Valley
- Mount Jamberoo

Mt Jamberoo is a theme park south of Sydney, and as far as I know the chair is actually part of the original chairlift that joined the Charlotte Pass resort with the Alpine way access road near Thredbo. That chairlift was in two stages - approx 15,000 feet long in total - broken up into two lifts of 9,000 and 6,000 feet. It cost in excess of 1.5 million pounds sterling in 1964 and only ran for three years. It was built perpendicular to the prevailing winds, so derailments were common (I've also been told the sheave design used on this installation wasn't brilliant, so that wouldn't have helped with the derailments). The tower head design was slightly different to others i've seen in that the top of the head is flat and has no curvature which seems common to later models.

R&D is no cheap thing, so I imagine that Mueller felt they couldn't cost justify it against the sales they were getting. In hindsight is might have help ensure their longevity! Their lattice tower design might, from a cost and engineering perspective, have also been an inhibitor do you think? They seem to have taken quite a while to adopt the centre pole.....

I'll send you some additional info Poloxskier,

The Mueller Gondola in Rupert was never replaced. The top terminal burnt to the ground and the city didn't have the funds to replace the lift.

Lift Kid, your interest never ceases to amaze me. This particular Gondola had a very simple entry and exit design. When a cabin or car was launched from a station it would be riding or rolling along a rail directly above the moving haul rope. This rail would be shaped liked a mini roller coaster ride and as it got closer to the exit point it would drop sharply to an exact point where the grip would mate with the rope and it would be the weight of the cabin which engaged the grip. The opposite would occour when entering the station. Believe it or not the lift relied on gravity on both functions. The really crazy part is that due to varying rope speeds often most times the cabins never equaled the rope and you can imagine the results. Also stopping the cabins once they had come off the line was also a very demanding full time job. I know on more than one occassion where a lift attendant may have been daydreaming and a cabin full of people had come flying into a station with no one to catch them. Thankfully the only fatality I know of that the lift caused was a maintance crew man working in the famous empty 50 gallon oil drum with the welded on hanger arm.....Thats another story.
Thanks for letting me waffle on.
A.R.M. out

Intresting, i heard the mueller gondola at Whistler had at manual detach/attach so it probably was the same design.

Ricardo, on Feb 5 2006, 12:47 PM, said:

I've been on that chair a few times at Jamberoo. They use it to take people up to the top of a bobsled run, with the sleds hanging from the back of the chairs. I remember that it bounces around like crazy whenever they stop or start the lift, you can see the tension/drive terminal slide back and forth quite a distance.

SkiBachelor, on Feb 4 2006, 10:52 AM, said:

Doesn't GMD stand for Gerhard Mueller and according to the web, the D is Dietlikon.

You're probably right Allan since I never knew what GMD stood for.

Who was Dietlikon though?

I don't know if it's a name, or a word - I couldn't find the translation for it. There's a GMD plaque on the side of the Red chair, that's how I knew :)

The two Mueller T-bars on Whistler have GMD cast into the side of the gearboxes. The old gondola at Whistler creekside was a simple push on/push off type. The grip had external gears which engaged on a rack as the cabin went by and caused the grip to lock and unlock. There is a description in Artur Doppelmayrs book. Worked pretty well for 25 years at Whistler.

Ricardo, on Feb 4 2006, 07:21 AM, said:

I have been head of lift maint. at the biggest little mountain in NH for almost 8 years and I have had both the joy and the pain of working on two mueller doubles during my tenure here. I am unaware of the vintage of the lifts you inquire about but I can tell you all you need to know about our 60's vintage muellers. First, unless you have seen some with lifting arms there isn't much to appreciate about a mueller double tower design. In order to change a sheave you must have the famous 120 lb. portable lifting arm with 12,500 lb. rated tie back chains that you must carry up the tower and set up before you can even lift the haul rope from the sheaves. By the way, climbing a lattice tower in the winter with ice all over them is no picnic unless you have ladders which ours do not, and they didn't come with any. Due to the design of our mueller sheaves you cannot simply remove pressure from them by lifting the haul rope and inch or two to change the sheave, as the bearings are pressed on to a one-sided axle that is in turn, pressed into the wheel. You must completely open the sheave frame before you can even think about removing a wheel from the frame. Unlike Hall, Borvig, or Partek (three other brands of chairlift we have here) where just lifting the cable and inch and driving out either a through axle or pin to remove a sheave, mueller made this pleasantly impossible. Despite what some may think, this is not an enjoyable process when it is 80 degrees out, not to mention in the dead of winter. Ever heard of the Double-X Clamp? Let me educate you. Not one, but two cast "fingers" or "pullers" tensioned by TWO stacks of 56 spring washers housed in an aluminum "head". If you have never seen one, they are hard to picture as they are unique and unlike anything else you have ever seen. This grip has a bushing in the chair neck where the aluminum head pivots, hence the need for two fingers as the design creates a duel pivot point. The second finger slides through an aluminum "glide block" in the head that pivots side to side as the grips go around the bullwheel. This second finger also stabilizes the grip, preventing it from pivoting in two points. A complicated grip to be sure. Sometime in the 80's a seat broke free of its bail causing it to fall to the ground and the chairs had to be retrofitted with gussets that connect the seat to the bail. The original design had the seat mounted to the bail using only 4 5mm allen bolts. These bolts sheared as they obviously were not strong enough to hold the weight the carriers were meant to hold. Adding these gussets was an obvious improvement but created another problem all together. The neck of the chair is slid onto each side of the bail with four bolts holding it in place as the bail actually comes apart in two halves with the seat and the neck holding the two sides of the bail together. Adding these gussets prevents you from taking the chair apart easily to replace a neck if the need arises. And in our case, it arises from time to time. The primary weld located at the top of the neck where the grip bushing is installed has begun to present problems for us. Due to the age of our lifts it is a required procedure to visually inspect 10% of the chairs on line, primary welds daily after operating to the public. Granted, upgrades and retrofits are always an option, but in the ski business money and grandfathering laws always present a challenge. Though Muellers are unique and neat in a nostalgic kind of way, it seems to me that they were over-engineered and not built to be worked on without some choice words and f bombs being dropped now and again. So if you don't have a Mueller, or never worked on one, don't be too upset, you can just think of me upon some mountain freezing, wondering if I should have a Paleantologist Degree so I can better understand the Dinosaurs in my back yard.