Modeling San Fransisco style cable cars


D

DALDEI

Member
Has anyone modeled a SF style cable car / track ?
I've seen these for sale (HO) and the individual cars look right, but there's something awfuly wrong about a cable car you have to pull with a loco ...
especially one on tracks with ties ... it realy spoils the illusion.

In my new layout I am going to have a hill which would be perfect for a mini SF scene I'd love to have a cable car or 2 going up the hill prototype style.
That is, on a street track (no ties) with a under-road cable (no loco).
I'm imagining a small motor driven loop of wire under track much like the prototype. Of coure I think it would be beyond my skills to have a detachable cable clamp so it would have to go up and stop (and then reverse?)

Curious if anyone's tried this. I can imagine modifying a stock car to have a cable gripper under the car ... Also thinking going off-scale to add to perspective. my main is HO but maybe a N scale cable car going up the hill would look good ... or maybe atrocious.
 
Your biggest challenge would be handling the end-of-line turn around. Cable cars are turned manually on a turntable in the street. As I recall, they are also pushed onto and off the turntable by the grip man and the conductor (used to be by the riders, too, before the safety Nazis took all the fun away).

You could have both ends of the run hidden from view. You could then run an endless motor driven belt over some pulleys. The cable car would be attached through a slot in the road in some manner. Viewers would see the car(s) go up and down the hill, but not the turn around.

I saw a couple layouts with cars and trucks moving on the streets using a similar system years ago. You might research that type of arrangement for the specifics of the mechanism.
 
Why not just power the car and save youself all that grief? you could model the slot in the center of the track easily enough.
 
Powering the car wouldn't be realistic. The grade of the hill would have to be too mild. Cable cars exist only because they can operate on hills too steep for steel wheel on steel rail adhesion.
 
SRN said:
Cable cars exist only because they can operate on hills too steep for steel wheel on steel rail adhesion.
Click to expand...

Not true, Chicago had the largest cable car system in the world at one time, and it's flat as a pancake! The cable car only survived traction for use on steep hills, where they were superior
 
I wasn't aware of the Chicago cable system. What was the rational for building it, versus the alternatives?
 
Perhaps you could set up a DCC/servo assembly in the cars, so that you could manually apply and remove the cable clamp. The clamp wouldn't need to be too complex, the cable could be picture wire or something, and the rails would provide DCC. You'd need something separate for brakes, though... maybe se up the clamp so that when it opens, it catches on the sides of the groove, and holds the car steady.
 
SRN said:
I wasn't aware of the Chicago cable system. What was the rational for building it, versus the alternatives?
Click to expand...

Well if I remember correctly (What I read, I wasn't there!), The system here predated practical electric trolley systems, but it was replaced within ten years. A few years ago they were doing street repairs and found one of the big cable spool wheels under the street. I understand they left it there.
 
To avoid the turn-around you could just have the trolley run around the block...It would always be going up the hill, though.
 
Gary B said:
Well if I remember correctly (What I read, I wasn't there!), The system here predated practical electric trolley systems, but it was replaced within ten years. A few years ago they were doing street repairs and found one of the big cable spool wheels under the street. I understand they left it there.
Click to expand...

That's pretty much it - electric trolleys weren't feasible yet, and steam propulsion was undesirable in downtown areas. Even today, the SF cable cars have limited onboard electricity (just batteries for the lights) and the recent implementation of electronic farecards requires the conductor to use a handheld device.

If it's just a simple incline with no ups and downs, clear fishing line with a motor winding the line up on a spool at the top of the hill might do the trick. Of course this would mean the cars would have to go back down backwards. One of the cable car lines in SF does just that using double-headed cars, but the type for which models are available for are the turntable type.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.



Back
Top