Every time i go skiing and im sat on a chair lift im always impressed by how these things stand up and how they are built, especially when some pylons are 90 degrees to the fall of the mountain, and others in some pretty obsure hard to reach places!?
Just wondered if anyone has seen, knows of any programmes / documentaries about designing and builiding ski lifts, or even whole resorts would be good, like i often wonder if there is ever any construction under the main pistes? a lot of them seem too wide, parallel & flat to be natural? - if there are ill have a look if i can DL them. cheers
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Stuntman Mike, There is an american website that answers your questions, I can't remeber its name, but I'm sure someone will be along with it soon!
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?
If you are fascinated by the engineering of modern day ski lifts I think you should go to St Anton in Austria to see the new Galzigbahn Gondola Lift. The architecture of the building housing the lift is like a Norman Foster/Richard Rodgers design of stainless steel and glass (they designed the Lloyds building in London).
The concept of the ski lift was to have a high capacity lift that could operate in higher winds and enable access to skiers from ground level. These aims were achieved by creating a gondola lift with large cabins that ride on twin cables. You enter and leave the station and gondola cabins at ground level and the cabins are then raised to/lowered from a height of about 30ft above ground level by Ferris Wheels onto/off the transport cables and the gondola cabins leave and enter the bottom station about 30ft above ground level.
Couple of things I have always wondered are 1) Is the cable one single run or is there a join in it? and 2) How do they get the damn thing up to the top in the first place?
N.B. I make no apologies for being a complete thicko about this!
Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
the cable is usually helicoptered into place I think, I'm sure I saw pics of that when they were building the vanoise express
After all it is free
After all it is free
Helicopters are used throughout the whole process.
Mainly used for transport materials and lowering pylons into place.
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.
Try looking at this for the construction of the Vanoise Express. It is also a very interesting website for construction of a whole range of large structures such as
Airfields/Airports
Bridges
Roads
Dams
Seaports
Lighthouses and Beacons
Railways
Tunnels
Waterways
Mountain Transport
Makes fantastic reading - but there again I always suspected I was a nerd!
Ski the Net with snowHeads
Ski the Net with snowHeads
There was a documentary about the building of the 3S gondola in the Kitzbühel area on German television. There the main cable was taken up the mountain on drums on low loader lorries (not without problems; I guess that the cable is too heavy for helicopters) and, if I remember correctly, first a thin cable was pulled across and so on until they could pull the main cable over. The cable is spliced to make the continuous loop, I believe.
The Doppelmayr/Garaventa web site, www.doppelmayr.com, has loads of brochures, etc., with pictures of lifts (though I haven't found any explanation of how they are built). The 2008 Yearbook even describes a "Chocolate-serving ropeway" - the mind boggles. It's a sort of miniature chairlift which distributes chocolate to visitors at the Zotter chocolate factory in Riegersburg (Austria) - capacity 2,592 drinking chocolates/hour
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
Stuntman Mike, If you are near The Vanoise Express there is a leaflet in english that gives the engineering details and the history of the construction.
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.
I might regret asking this as ignorance may be bliss but what exactly is the mechanism that holds the chair / bubble onto the cable. Is there a diagram somewhere ?
So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
Shows how a cable car is held onto the cable. When you work it out - let me know
You know it makes sense.
You know it makes sense.
dsoutar, It is basically a very strong spring clamp.
The default (fail safe) position is that the spring holds the clamp closed, then as it enters the terminal area (assuming a detachable), a lever from the clamp is pushed over by the force of movement of the chair/gondola cabin, opening the clamp and allowing it to leave the main transport cable.
FAQ
Poster: A snowHead
