the Great Orme funicular, Llandudno, Wales

undated postcard

a view from 2005 (wikimedia)

The Great Orme Tramway (or in Welsh, "Tramffordd y Gogarth") is a 756 metre long, 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) gauge funicular tramway in Llandudno in north Wales, opened the same year as the Wellington Cable Car (see earlier posts), but unlike that of Wellington, still uses the original cars. 

It takes passengers from Llandudno Victoria station to just below the summit of the Great Orme headland and operates like the Wellington Cable Car now does, where the cars are permanently fixed to the cable, and are stopped and started by stopping and starting the cable. As one car is ascending, the other is descending, and they meet midway.

The funicular was opened in two stages: the lower section on 31 July 1902 and the upper on 8 July 1903. The two sections operate independently, with two cars on each section which are mechanically separate. The lower section is built on or alongside the public road and has gradients as steep as 1 in 3.8; the cable for this section lies below the road surface in a conduit between the rails. The bottom half of the section is single track, but above the passing loop it has interlaced double track. 

The upper section is less steep with a maximum gradient of 1 in 10, and is single track apart from a short double track passing loop equipped with Abt type points to accommodate the cable.

The original power house, at the Halfway station between the lower and upper sections, was equipped with winding gear powered by steam from coke-fired boilers. This was replaced in 1958 by electrically powered apparatus. In 2001, the entire Halfway station, its control room and its power plant were completely rebuilt and re-equipped. The funicular uses four tramcars, as mentioned in service since 1902. An overhead wire telegraph was formerly used for communication between the tram and the engineer-driver in charge of winding the drum, and has been replaced with a radio-control system.

undated postcard