Talk:Matlock Cable Tramway

Are we sure this is a cable car?

The article links to cable car (railway) and that article links back here. That article describes a specific form of cable hauled street tramway where the cars attach and detach themselves from a continuously moving cable using a gripper. The most obvious still-existing example being, of course, the San Francisco cable car system, although the system was quite common elsewhere before electric tramways took over.

But the description here sounds more like it is describing a street running funicular rather than a cable car. The crucial difference is that in a funicular, the cars are permanently attached to the cable, and the cars are stopped and reversed by stopping and reversing the cable. Current existing example of the street running funicular are the lower section of the Great Orme Tramway, and several lines in Lisbon.

Can anybody confirm which of these two systems we are talking about here?. -- Starbois (talk) 11:30, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Walter Hefti who tried to list the cable railways of the world by classes (Walter Hefti: Schienenseilbahnen in aller Welt. Birkhäuser Verlag Basel und Stuttgart 1975, ISBN 3-7643-0726-9) classifies Matlok as cable car (#307.041) and Great Orme as funicular (#207.30). Matlok cars are described as having grippers, which makes sense if there was a third car. This car couldn't have been used otherwise. Hefti's reference is George W. Hilton: The Cable Car in America. Howell North Press, C.C., 1971.-- Gürbetaler (talk) 21:26, 1 March 2014 (UTC)