A train that never sees daylight 

I can't believe not more people have discovered your channel. Your videos are super informative and interesting!

This feels like the new, long-form Tom Scott. Glad to see there is someone ready to take on the job ones Tom retires this year.

This is so much more sophisticated than the timber harvesting funicular railways that used to operate 100 years ago east of Melbourne in Australia. There were hundreds of them. In 1939 the founder of Mt Buller ski resort died when the simple mechanical brake failed on one of them failed. Passengers were banned on logging tramways, but he was testing funiculars with plans to install one to improve access to the ski resort.

I did not expect this kind of quality from a channel with just 8k subscribers. Keep it up!

Love the engineering spaces views, IMHO that's the real tour of the spaces. Far too often these places are hidden away tucked away and never to be seen, and yet they are essential to any of the modern amenities we enjoy. I really appreciate the folks that let you see some of the spaces, and talk through how they all work. Most appreciated.

Another difference between the San Francisco cable cars and funiculars is that the San Francisco cable cars can detach from and attach to the cable, while funiculars are of course permanently attached. Thus the San Francisco cable cars are the last of the traditional cable cars. The idea for them originated in 1869 (nice) by Andrew Smith Hallidie, who had the idea after witnessing an accident in which a streetcar drawn by horses over wet cobblestones slid backwards, killing the horses. Hallidie solicited financial support in 1871 and 1872, and the first successful cable-operated street running train was the Clay Street Hill Railroad which had its inaugural run in August 1873. The cable cars are pulled by a cable running below the street, held by a grip that extends from the car through a slit in the street surface, between the rails. Each cable is 1.25 inches (3.2 cm) in diameter, running at a constant speed of 9.5 miles per hour (15.3 km/h), and driven by a 510 horsepower (380 kW) electric motor located in the central power house (part of the Cable Car Museum), via a set of self-adjusting sheaves. While these are the last of the traditional cable cars, other lines pretend they're cable cars, like the Great Orme Tramway in Llandudno, Wales that goes between the summit of Great Orme to the center of town at Llandudno Victoria where a part of it is street running. Lisbon's three street funiculars act that way too.

Underground funiculars exist elsewhere too! Examples include the Tünel/F2 in Istanbul! It has two stations connecting Karaköy and Beyoğlu. It runs uphill from near the confluence of the Golden Horn with the Bosphorus and is about 573 meters (or 1,880 feet) long. It opened all the way back in January 1875, making it the second-oldest underground railway in the world after the London Underground, and the oldest in continental Europe as it opened two decades before Budapest opened their Metro! There's also the Carmelit in Haifa! As the name implies, it runs through the religiously important Mount Carmel. It has a total of six stations and connects downtown Haifa with Carmel Center, and connects to places like the Haifa Zoo, Haifa Center railway station, and the beautiful Baháʼí World Centre. It's the oldest subway system in the Middle East as it opened in October 1959, but because of its small size, it's also one of the world's smallest subway systems as well, as the tunnel is just 1.8 km/1.1 miles long!

Incredible video - it's like you exactly read my mind, answering every question I came up with, and addressing all the parts that I wanted to learn more about! Subscribed, thank you!

The sound of the cable cars actually in orperation sounds so much like the zipline i went on in Wales. Real loud and awesome.

Hi! Finnally new video! I've been waiting for it. Can you do "A day in life of ropeway operator?" Edit: Thank you'all guus for 6 likes! You are the best❤

This is really cool! Thanks for showing this amazing equipment and the amazing people who operate it.

This is an amazing video. I've known of funicular railways and as they are called in the USA incline railways but I wasn't aware of a funicular railway running completely in a diagonal tunnel. It was neat to see just how much it had in common with the gondola system only flipped perpendicular 90 degrees. I was noticing the similarities of the power supply when you said you wouldn't go into anymore detail because you had covered it in another video. I thought it was funny when the operator said that if there was a fire detected in the tunnel the alert would come up on the panel and he said Oh, shizer. I want to thank you for making these videos in English.

Thank you youtube for suggesting me this well produced video! And thank you Kalsan for great thumbnail and title work to lure me in :D

YAY!! A new video to enjoy during lunch! As usual, awesome work, great editing, and great people at the facility! Thank you.

This channel is super underrated! Every single video is an absolute banger. Your Style and topics are always engaging and interesting. Thank you for everything you do! Liebi grüess us em aargau :)

This is sooooo fascinating! Thank you for this very well made video. Another set of childhood questions that nobody could answer…finally answered.

Love your tone and manner of presenting. Thanks for a fascinating detailed video about such a cool funicular!

Luckily the driver speaks German so I don't need subt... ... thank you for including subtitles. Didn't know about the trick with different wheels for switches. Ingenious little trick!

Fascinating engineering and attention to details. Thanks for making such a content.

Good job on the video and love your dedication. Keep up the good work I’m rooting for you.

Thank you so much for this. Very professional recording. You can be proud of yourself.

Thank you very much for taking the time and energy to put this video together. Very interesting video.

What a masterpiece and a beautiful build too. Thanks for posting this as well. Have a nice day.

I had ridden the underground funicular at Kaprun several times that killed all those many people. Once you understand what happened by fire, it is something I would never do again. My understanding is that the train no longer exists. Back then there was no door at the lower end of the tunnel to stop wind. It as a blow torch once the fire started.

Great video!!! Hi Markus 😉

Very nice stuff - I work as a driver of the only funicular in New Zealand. Always love hearing more about the system and its history!

Excellent video. Keep up the great work. I love the behind the scenes perspective

Very nice model. There are lots of channels that try to explain things while looking at the real thing and just end up confusing their viewers. Reducing the whole system down to 2 cars, a wheel, and a string on a sheet of cardboard was perfect.

What a fantastically underrated channel, subscribed!

Just found your channel. Excellent video, very well explained, i will for sure be subscribing, thank you!

Enjoyed this video even more than i thought i would

Impressive! I knew about funicular railways but never in this much detail.

High quality for this "small" channel. Keep going!

Very well presented and informative, well done.

Excellent explanation!

I've noticed funiculars have the strange looking switch as shown at 4:01 and I'm always confused as I thought the wheels of the train were shaped the same as regular trains. This video finally explained it in such an easy-to-understand way!

THATS is one hell of a video! God job mate

Incredible video, keep it up!

I was curious about the windscreen wipers. It was interesting to learn of the tunnel seepage and car wash. Great video.

Very good work, learned something today.

Honestly with Tom Scott about to take a break here soon, this guy has so much potential to fill his gigantic shoes and carry on great educational content.

I agree with comments from others, very nice detailed work on this. Thank you

The original Hungerbergbahn (1rst stage from downtown Innsbruck) used to be a Vernicular railway. I've ridden on it. One of its cars is still on display in Jenbach at their cable car museum. You can catch glimpses of it from the railroad cab cams.

There is a similar funicular/train tunnel under Galata in Istanbul, called the Karaköy-Beyoğlu Tünel. Its construction was completed in 1875. It's much easier than walking up the steep slope to Galata from the Golden Horn area. A lovely historical train.

Very interesting and technical . Quality video 👍👍

Your channel is criminally underrated

Nice to see funiculars being used and modernized for the future.

The sound at about 6:48 is amazing....you can really feel the enormous power of the engines.

Sehr interessant! I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, where our cable cars work by gripmen engaging grips to pull the car, then releasing when at a stop. Only time I've ever been on a funicular was in Athens. Such a great tech. But I'd hate to think someone had to spend all day underground on one of these.

Awesome vid mate!

This is very cool! DTW airport has a funicular and I couldn't figure out how the cars switched tracks in the middle of the run. In that case there are 3 stations, a double-sided one in the middle in addition to the end stations for transporting passengers along the long terminal building. It is clear you spend a lot of time getting video and editing, I wish you well.

Great video !!! James.

Danke schön for this video, chap! Always a pleasure to see just how magical stuff like this really operates! Subbed! ⛰🚞💜 I wish we had things like this in my country too - Not least because I would love to design and build something like this (Ideally; With a speed >25m/s 🚞💨😍 ) - But aside from not having the terrain of Schweiz und Österreich; If HS2 is anything to go by, we don't have the money for mountainbahnen either! 🇬🇧💷📉😉 One thing that scares me is that every time I see a funicular in a tunnel, Kaprun is the very first thing that comes to mind. It wouldn't ever stop me from using one (If only I could afford a Skiurlaub! 🎿 🇦🇹 🥺) but you can be damned sure I'll always be checking the cab for fan heaters before I step on board! ♨🔥😨 And I have to admit: Seeing how handsome Austrian folks can be, it's not only _Mountainbahnen_ I feel the UK is desperately short of... 🇦🇹🏳‍🌈😍

Very well done. Thanks.

This Is Awesome... Very Informative... Thanks...

Amazing vid bro You gained a new subscriber

That's amazing and had no idea something so heavy-duty existed! Cool.

welcome back, interesting did not know there was a funikular that is fully underground

Great video. Enjoyed.

Wow awsome quality video, and very interesting. 😊 grüessli us züri 😊

Amazing Video

i love it too see a video about a cable car i have been to!

This is an awosome video, i enjoyed it alot. It was very fun seeing and hearing about... well everything realy Hope you (whoever reads this) have a lovely day :D

It's funny to see this as an Austrian who lives 20 minutes away from the Pitztal and has never ever heard from this. Additionally hearing the Austrian accent in an englich video is hilarious! Was really interesting to watch!

Thank you for sharing.

Bloody marvellous video.

The wheels on that first funicular are quite interesting. I was assuming they would be more similar to regular railroad wheels and assumed they had some sort of automatic mechanical switching system. This is much more functional and clever though. Really neat.

14:30 the amount of energy in that room, wow, just the sounds! Now imagine the carnage that cable would cause if it snapped.. Wouldn't want to be in that room if that happens

The great big cable and the wheels that pull/guide them remind me a of a big machine we have here in Canada that operates as a lock on a waterway. It's called Big Chute, it runs on rails, and it lifts boats out of the water, down a hill, and back into the water at the bottom. It is pulled up the hill by four cables and each cable runs into these big wheels and into the building which houses the motors that pull the machine up the hill. Each cable has its own motor. The difference is the water at the top is past the peak of the hill and slightly down the other side so when the machine reaches the peak the cables flip direction and it is let down hill on either side by gravity and the speed is governed by the motors. The cables switch in pairs in different spots so it's not possible for the machine to stall. The whole machine is powered by a hydro-electric dam right next to it.

this system was griding my midn for so long trying to figure it out how the trains avoid crashing , thanks to your vide now I can rest in peace !!!

I found your video fascinating. I live in Palm Springs, California and we have an aerial tramway that runs up one of our local mountains, Mount San Jacinto. The similarities to Pitztaler are amazing. Again, dual cars with one going up while one goes down. Each car holds up to 80 people. However, our tramway never sees darkness. It's always in sunshine or moonlight! Primary use of course is for passengers, but like the Pitztaler it must carry all goods, food and supplies up the mountain as there is no road. It even has to carry water for drinking and sanitation purposes in an under carriage belly tank. You start at the bottom where the altitude is 440 feet (134 m). Your drive your automobile up to the parking lots at the 2,643 foot level (803 m). After parking you enter the Valley Station where you board for the 10 minute ride on the rotating tram cars up to the Mountain Station at 8,516 feet (2,589 m). That's a rise (or fall) of 5,873 feet or 587 feet (179 m) per minute. By comparison, a typical airline jet climbs or descends at 500 feet (152 m) per minute. Then, if you are hardy and ambitious, you can hike on foot to the mountain top at 10,834 feet (3,294 m). There are beautiful lookouts at the top and many trails around the State Park there. There are also 2 nice restaurants, one of which is fine dining. Wonders like this dot the world and I thank you for sharing yours with us!

Subbed, looking forward to you hitting 100k soon. ^^

amazing and very interesting! thank you!

Subbed, Liked and now binge watching.. :) great channel.

Thanks for this well done video. In Los Angeles we have the shortest funicular in the world called Angel's Flight. It's similar to the Pollybahn. It always feels like the two cats are going to hit.😊

Thanks a lot for this video. 30 years ago when was around 10..11 years old, my family went for ski holiday every christmas to Kaprun and every easter to Pitztal. Because i was very interested in cable cars and ropeways and ask my parents a lot of questions they could not answer (my biggest concern at this time was, the switch will be switched wrong and the trains fail to pass at the right side, or the cable would brake....) , they speak about me with our host and he knows someone working at the Gletscherbahn. So at the next bad weather day my parent drop me at the bottom station and the guy showed me nearly everything. First thing was the function of the switch. I could drive with him in the drivers cabin upward and he stopped for a short time just before the switch, so i can see it in detail. Then at the top station we went below the train and he showed me the wheels , so it was now clear to me that the switch never will fail. Also he explained the emergency brakes that will grab the rail in case of a cable brake, and how the cable is fixed by a drum and can be shortened after some time of stretching. (You missed this part? ) after that he showed me the rectifier room. I was impressed by this big semicondutor parts, comparing to the small parts of my electronic experiment box...Not sure if it was a thyristor rectifier and if it was able to feed back power to the grid or if they just used it at brake resistor to heat the restaurant? Also i have seen the DC motors, gearbox and the generators. I think there was no demonstration how to switch the gear....Sadly i had no camera with me, so i made drawings of the drivetrain later. And in my memory the machine room is somehow bigger as in the video. Thanks a lot!

Outstanding video. You really put the “fun” in “funicular.” 😂

Very interesting indeed. Great video.

Great video

I actually used this funicular during a ski trip. It was really fun.

Now, I am fan of your channel.

There is even a funicular in Wiesbaden (Germany) which only uses the weight of the cars, it's called "Nerobergbahn". The way they make sure the upper care is always heavier then the lower one is a huge water tank in any of them where they take water from a pond at the top of the mountain making it heavier and at the bottom you can hear (and see!) how the water swooshes out of the tank in just a few seconds! The speed and the departure is simply controlled by brakes!

the video is so informative

Hey there! wonderful video! Ich bin in Heidelberg aufgewachsen, dort haben wir auch 2 solcher bahnen. Eine modernisierte Bahn zum Schloss und zur Molkenkur hoch (Die Schlossstation ist dabei die Weiche, an der die beiden Bahnen aneinander vorbeifahren. Hier stoppen sie halt genau da auch noch.) und dann von der Molkenkur auf den Königsstuhl ganz nach oben eine historische Bahn, mit nur 2 Stationen. Beide haben aber exakt das Prinzip, was du hier erklärt hast! Falls du mal Gelegenheit hast, musst du dir das unbedingt ansehen 😌

Good video, thank you.

Fun fact I watch the video in a cable car (funicular) right now. It's my primary form of transportation between the District I live in and town in the valley .

It's interesting 🤔 to see the cable car. Improved.

I totally thought you were going to talk about the tunneled funicular in Istanbul when I first saw the video heading.

Loved the Video. This what needed in India. There are few temples on in the Lap of the Himalayan Ranges. This would significantly reduce the travel time and burden on people

Not sure if it may not count due to it's lack of cable/rope (it could be made to use a suspended cable or cable-suspended rail even easier), but the system Eugen-Langen suspension railway in Wuppertal might be interesting. ....actually, now that I think of it, Dresden has a funicular instead of adhesion-railway-self-propelled installation of system Eugen-Langen. It's great advantage over regular railway is the natural pendulum nature giving very strong tilting easily (they tested up to +-30degrees back in the day on test track; the Wuppertal installation was designed for +-15 degrees). Otherwise, it's like a subway, but suspended on a bridge structure (that could be cable suspended, if the rails are designed to conformally twist enough to not resist the natural torsion wobble of the cable suspension in curves) over a street or river.

In Hastings UK, the west hill funicular is underground. The east hill funicular is in an open cutting in the side of the cliff and is extremely steep.

4:03 that is so smart yet simple. i would have never guessed that.

Omg he's back!

This is amazing

I love the engineering of underground transportation

You should check out the Fribourg funicular that's powered by just filling up the car at the top with water and letting gravity do the work. Sort of like the emergency mode for the one here

Haifa, Israel, has had a fully underground funicular for decades, the only subway line in the country.

The Istanbul one is underground too.Those railways are generally called funiculars in Europe.In the USA cable cars are those tram kind of ones like in San Francisco.Those ones that go above the ground on cables 🚠 are called cable cars in most of the world but in the USA they sometimes call them ariel tramways.You also get a counterweight kind of funicular which uses a counterweight rather than another carriage and I have seen these in Vilnius and London.

Nice video! Btw: The motors are not DC, there are frequency inverters, but the output is not DC. By the electric motor datasheet which you show in video at 13:43, the motor is rated for 2x-400V with 890A, 50-1500RPM and 11,3-340kW of power :)

There's one like this in Aven Armand in France aswell. It's really cool