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A cable railway is a railway that uses a cable, rope or chain to haul trains. It is a specific type of cable transportation . The most common use for a cable railway is to move vehicles on a steeply graded line that is too steep for conventional locomotives to operate on – this form of cable railway is often called an incline or inclined ...
Bullhead rail was the standard for the British railway system from the mid-19th until the mid-20th century. In 1954, bullhead rail was used on 449 miles (723 km) of new track and flat-bottom rail on 923 miles (1,485 km). [13] One of the first British Standards, BS 9, was for bullhead rail, which was originally published in 1905, and revised in ...
For example, North America uses the reference rail as the line rail which is the east rail of tangent track running north and south, the north rail of tangent track running east and west, the outer rail (the rail that is further away from the center) on curves, or the outside rails in multiple track territory. [6]
Grooved rail, used when track is laid in places traversed by other vehicles or pedestrians. A grooved rail, groove rail, or girder rail is a special rail with a groove designed for tramway or railway track in pavement or grassed surfaces (grassed track or track in a lawn). The head on the right-hand side of the rail bears the vehicle's weight.
A groove through each rail allows the wheel flanges to pass through the intersecting rails. Without countermeasures each wheel would dip into the groove and strike the frog point gap causing unacceptable wear. The point where two tracks join and the vehicle can take one of two directions is called a railway switch. This works on the same ...
These include simple rail adhesion, rack railways and cable inclines (including rail mounted water tanks to carry barges). To help with braking on the descent, a non-load-bearing "brake rail" located between the running rails can be used, similar to the rail used in the Fell system, e.g. by the Snaefell Mountain Railway on the Isle of Man.
As many early cable car operators discovered the hard way, if the grip is not applied properly, it can damage the cable, or even worse, become entangled in the cable. In the latter case, the cable car may not be able to stop and can wreak havoc along its route until the cable house realizes the mishap and halts the cable.
Given that the cable runs at a relatively constant speed, accelerating the vehicle to match the speed of the cable presents a technical difficulty; possible methods are to apply the grip gradually, to accelerate the vehicle (e.g. by guiding wheels) prior to applying the grip, or to use a sprung linkage between the grip and the vehicle. The ...