In a message dated 09/22/99 8:18:43 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
<< I'm starting a project, for a UNR Industrial Archaeology class, on a
funicular (cable) logging railway at Lake Tahoe.
San Francisco has, of course, its passenger funicular (cable car)
system
and Europe has (had??) passenger funicular systems in the Alps. Does anyone
have knowledge of, experience with, or references to, other NON-passenger
funiculars?
Robert Leavitt
>>
Three come to mind: One in Skagway, Alaska used during the gold rush and
after if I remember. I have been to the base camp of it, and it hauled
supplies up the into the mountain pass for travel into the Yukon.
[log in to unmask] may be able to provide more info.
The other was an immense one, miles (?) long in Solvay, NY. It was used to
carry ores over the countryside to the processing plant which has been since
torn down, which at the time was hopefully going to be recorded for
posterity. This is just outside Syracuse, NY, and near the Solvay plant that
supplied 1/4 of all the dynamite used in World War I. Stockpiled dynamite
across the "Canada Creek" almost exploded and would have leveled Syracuse
with the force of a small atomic bomb. Greenhouse Consultants, Inc. were
involved somehow with the request for recording they may be able to provide
more info.
The third, I rode as a kid on "Swampee's Farm." It ran along the "back" of
the fields and may have been used in the harvesting at the end of the rows.
Out of season you could ride it through the trees into a mattress thrown over
the end of it.
George J. Myers, Jr.
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