 Poster: A snowHead
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The funicular at Cairngorm is running again - albeit under test conditions. So there is hope it will operate this winter.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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I don't believe it!! Some good news at last!
All aboard for an epic, train-served winter! 
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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BBC report: Cairngorm funicular shut down for snagging works
I note the report only lists the original cost of building the funicular as £19.5million, but I think the final cost was more than that? Also of course no mention of the additional £25million cost of repairs....
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Just knock it down and replace with something else. Absolute mess of a project
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Word on the street is it is shut for an undefined period AKA fecked
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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@GlasgowCyclops, HIE say that "inspectors identified that some of the ‘scarf joint assemblies’ that link the beams at the top of the piers did not meet the required tension." "Contractors are due to arrive on site within days to begin work using specialist tensioning equipment."
Seeing as HIE recently got £11 million back from the original builders of the funicular I wonder if HIE will now be bringing a new legal action against the repairers! 
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| Alastair Pink wrote: |
Seeing as HIE recently got £11 million back from the original builders of the funicular I wonder if HIE will now be bringing a new legal action against the repairers! |
That will not be happening! At the outset of the repair process COWI the repair designers, given they also carried out the structural inspections post closure, were explicit that given the condition of the Funicular viaduct they would only proceed with a repair design if HIE waived any future claims against COWI.
However, for HIE even if the funicular doesn't run again, its mission accomplished. They've destroyed the Ciste Chairlifts in order to have kicked the difficult questions can about the funicular project history 6 years down the road, allowing certain individuals to have 6 years of retirement in peace. Meanwhile they've signed off on an out of court settlement that probably for ever locks shut the cans of worms that could have been opened in the Court of Session.
Do some googling on who was chairman of HIE and Morrisons Construction at the time the Funicular project was developed and do some more googling on the case of Anglican Water Group against Sir Fraser Morrison et al which was also settled out of court with AWG alleging a fraudulent sale of Morrison Construction to themselves.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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Since I posted in the Ciste Chairlifts thread this morning that CML had pushed the first available date for funicular tickets from 2nd September to 9th September, they’ve already been pushed back to 16th September.
What will the date be next Friday? 
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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This does not sound good at all....winter is on its way!
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| Rogerdodger wrote: |
| This does not sound good at all....winter is on its way! |
Now its being pushed back to Saturday 23rd September and it's only Tuesday, never mind Friday! Still appears to be no further comment from HIE and no information updates on Cairngorms website. Infact if you expand the header weather bit it tells you the funicular is open because they've not updated the report info since April.
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You know it makes sense.
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Meanwhile, they’ve put barriers/ ticketed parking on the Cas car park for the tourist visitors using the train etc, so walkers/ climbers etc are currently parking on the verge of the access road. Highland Council are moving to make that stretch of verge metered parking (along with Loch Morlich-Hayfield stretch). I wonder how full the Cas car park will be given the funicular mess….
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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That parking at the Hayfield and road up to the Reindeer centre will a nightmare if its metered and you can't stay for longer than 24h which is what it says. I often leave my car there for longer than that. Up the road the same is true esp in the lower car park. This whole Funi situation is a complete shambles, i feel so sorry for the local businesses that are trying to work around a 'resort' that doesn't actually want anyone there.
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Poster: A snowHead
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I had a look the their 'booking' page earlier today - 14 people have, so far, booked for the whole of Saturday 23rd !! -- not that popular then..
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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P&J says it is the end of this month but I’m not holding my breath on that one because it has been pushed back so many times.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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The world's only snowtrain that shuts when it snows...
Can't believe Scotland / London are still throwing money at that heap of junk.
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So at the start of the week the funicular was ‘back on track’ and reopening this month. Yesterday they pushed it back another 8 days to 1st October.
The joins between the scarfed ends of the precast beams are the problem. In COWIs initial assessment of the viaduct it was stated these were a risk for a brittle (ie sudden) shear failure!
Yet their particular issues were not worked on during the main project.
So was this put off deliberately to move expenditure outside the main repair budget so that didn’t rise further?
If so were HIE risking public safety to avoid more blushes? You just don’t close for routine snagging on the Friday of the busiest holiday weekend of the summer!
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| haggishunter wrote: |
So at the start of the week the funicular was ‘back on track’ and reopening this month. Yesterday they pushed it back another 8 days to 1st October.
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Now pushed back to 16th October.
Any bets on it being back in operation by Xmas?
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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This thing is way beyond farce now. I genuinely wonder if the short open period was safe and legitimate. Although thinking on it I recall mention of "waiting for certification".
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Lol.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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The latest push back on ticket sales is due to the ‘scale and complexity of the project’. Does anyone else read that as it’s fubar’d? 
Also, if you do go to the website and try and book tickets there is some intriguing changes there. You now have to select a SPECIFIC train and each time slot is limited to 30 tickets. Departures are on the hour and half hour. Now if the capacity is going to be limited, to only run trains every 30 minutes in the middle of a school holiday period suggests the funicular will be operating at low speed that is insufficient to to turn around to a 15min or 20minute timetable.
Obviously HIE are giving almost nothing away, but the constraints in the booking system bring about a sense of ‘deja vu’, regards the ‘reduced operating parameters’ implemented in September 2018 before the funicular was closed down completely in October. As well as drastic speed and capacity constraints, those ‘reduced operating parameters’ included a constraint that the funicular could not operate if the temperature at the Base Station was below 4ºc or cross winds exceeded 35mph.
Incidentally, historically the operating limit for the White Lady Chairlift was 38mph across the line, this was reduced for several years to 25 mph to strengthen the case for the funicular. For comparison the Glencoe Access Chair which is by no means a modern state of the art lift, having been in operation for 32 years has a limit of 50mph for uploading skiers.
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@haggishunter, interesting post. According to Wikipedia "The maximum operating speed is 10 m/s (36 km/h; 22 mph) during the ski season and 5 m/s (18 km/h; 11 mph) the rest of the year." Also "Up to 120 standing passengers can be carried in each of the system's two carriages."
So it sounds like the funicular will be running at reduced speed and capacity in the foreseeable future?
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You know it makes sense.
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I'd be as bold to say those are its new operating parameters end of. That's how it will be until the day it finally stops working altogether which could be sooner than any of us hope. The sooner this hill is taken back into private ownership and invested in properly the better, the potential is massive.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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Poster: A snowHead
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@Alastair Pink, I believe the current safety case for the funicular has an operating capacity of 100. This reduction was deemed acceptable on the basis that operating experience showed the 120 capacity was not practical during the snowsports season. The space taken up by snowsports gear and the time taken to squeeze a few extra people in meant the time penalty of attempting fully loading the funicular was not worth it.
Operating experience has also shown that the funicular can not realistically run at more than a 12 minute frequency and struggles to sustain more than a 15 minute schedule for any length of time. That means that in reality its maximum achievable winter capacity was 500 persons per hour uplifted with no middle stops, a fraction under 42% of the officially rated 1200 persons per hour per direction.
In other words the Funicular at best couldn’t realistically match the uplift capacity of the White Lady Chairlift it replaced which was built in 1961. At 30 persons per trip every 30 minutes the uplift capacity is 60 persons per hour, a TENTH of the old chairlift! A job in the Ptarmigan Restaurant during the summer season would be a really cushy number with that uplift capacity! 
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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@haggishunter, what a shambles!
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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According to this reference 'snagging' is an expression widely used in the construction industry to define the process of inspection necessary to compile a list of minor defects or omissions in building works for the contractor to rectify. It would be interesting to know if the cost of all these 'snagging' works was included in the original repair contract to be paid for by the contractor, or whether HIE (i.e the taxpayer) is having to pay extra money to get this work done. Presumably we'll only find out when HIE's annual accounts are published....
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Coming from the construction industry @Alastair Pink, trust me......this is NOT snagging!
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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I've not been on the new Penkenbahn but does the 3S lift bang around a corner without a middle station like the telecabine did?
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@stevew, No
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It is quite clear that the Cairngorm Funicular is not an asset, but a liability.
It has no reliable future.
It is an eyesore and has not even, despite the £millions spent on these matters, been constructed in an environmentally sensitive manner.
The so-called "snagging" list should not include the major foundations.
The current hand-to-mouth on-off unreliability is only the beginning.
Scotland used to be known for remarkable engineering projects. When will they learn that a reliable, long-term project cannot be done cheaply? This one has ended up costing ~£40M. For what?
Let's try to calculate the cost per person per anum in 2024 values. To include the cost of the Access road, and the savings to be gained in its aerial bypass.
Last edited by Then you can post your own questions or snow reports... on Wed 27-09-23 18:55; edited 4 times in total
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Good, it went around the corner without a mid station to slow it down with a shocking bang, no wonder they had to replace it after only 10 years!
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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| stevew wrote: |
| no wonder they had to replace it after only 10 years! |
1995 to 2015 is 20 years, not 10. I've never heard any suggestion that the replacement had anything to do with the (slight) corner. There is still a corner on the replacement lift anyway. Anyway, back to Cairngorm...
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@denfinella, oops. I did follow the links but just typed what @SkiPresto, said, so my fault for not paying attention! Anyway back to the travesty funicular
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FAQ
to achieve the halving of uplift capacity and resulting decline in what used to be Scotland's premier ski area..... 
