Julia sends along a link to a chairlift system in Montafon, Austria. So what do we make of it?
Image via Alpinforum.
Julia sends along a link to a chairlift system in Montafon, Austria. So what do we make of it?
Image via Alpinforum.
5 Comments
It’s a clever solution to the problem of turning a corner without detaching. You can’t do that with a simple bullwheel for each side because one of them would be on the same side as the chair hangers. So the return line goes around two bullwheels (the second is hidden behind the main structure) and crosses over itself, and the uphill line makes the turn gently via an array of horizontal sheaves. The Snowflake chair at Breckenridge in Colorado has a similar arrangement.
@ Chip,
To be perfectly honest, I have no idea what you just said.
Yeah, it took me a while to figure out what was going on there. This picture is the one that really helped me get a clear idea of how that corner works http://www.mircotscharner.ch/galerie/albums/Hochjoch/hochjoch008.jpg
Here are some photos of the Snowflake Lift at Breckenridge too:
http://www.skilifts.org/old/images/resort_images/co-breckenridge/snowflake/snowflake.htm
To avoid this set-up if you wanted turns but still wanted travel in 2 directions you could have the ropeway travel in a bigger loop…a triangle shape or a rhombus or something. Basically like @Chip says the hanger can only make turns on the outside of a corner and passengers can’t really travel around bullwheels unless they are moving very slowly or the bullwheel/corner diameter is very large (this is why bullwheels aren’t used on the passenger sides…uphill sides…of the ropeway examples given above)
Well, with a detachable lift, one way of turning a corner is to deflect the uphill and downhill sides of the rope with a pair of small bullwheels. The one that’s toward the inside of the turn is on the outside side of the rope, which is where the grips attach. So this doesn’t work for a fixed-grip lift; any deflection wheels have to be on the inside of the loop. Hence this arrangement, where the downhill line goes around a bullwheel that sends it uphill on the same alignment as the lower section, and then goes 180 degrees around another bullwheel and then up to cross over itself and the uphill line. The deflection angle of the first bullwheel (the one visible in the picture) is 180 degrees minus the turn angle.