- The folks at this quarry
in Claughton near Lancaster dig up about 60,000 tonnes of shale rock
from the ground every year. That shale needs to get to the brickworks, about a mile and a half that way. Nowadays, you'd have some
fancy underground conveyor belt or you'd just have trucks loading up
and driving back and forth. But this quarry opened in the 1920s. So the solution was a bit different:
an aerial ropeway. This is the last aerial ropeway
in Britain. It's nearly a hundred years old. It needs no fuel and
no electricity to run. And in 15 years time, it'll be gone. - This ropeway was
commissioned in the 1920s but we've been quarrying
from this valley now for well over 150 years. An empty bucket arrives, it goes onto
what we call the bull rail, so that automatically comes off the rope and it allows the rope
to go around a wheel. The bucket then is dusted.
If the weather is bad, the rain adheres to the bucket
and the muck sticks to it. So that would reduce what
is taken down to the factory and also would affect
the balance of the rope. And then it's put under a feeder where a given amount of material
is put into that bucket, about a quarter of a tonne. At that point, another
operative takes the full bucket from under the feeder and waits
until the correct positioning of the incoming bucket is in place, which allows him then to
feed it onto the rope. That spacing is critical because
of the way the rope works. It's gravity fed. - The brickworks is downhill from here so all the power for this
ropeway comes from gravity. Put the full buckets of shale on one side,
going down the hill and the empty buckets on
the other side going up and you don't need an
engine house or a motor. You just need brakes
to regulate the speed. It takes about half an hour for a round trip.
There are about 40 buckets. This ropeway will move about
300 tonnes of shale every day with no need for petrol or electricity. So let's go to the brickworks
at the other end and see how it works down there. - As a bucket comes in the other end,
an operator is stood waiting for it. It comes off the rope at a
given speed onto a bull rail, from that bull rail, the
operator walks round. There's a pivot system on the bucket
that tips into a hopper. At that point, it then feeds
into a dump truck. The operator then puts the bucket back. When the correct space is positioned,
he pushes the bucket onto the rope. It's an art to swing that bucket
and tip it at the right time. They do walk quite a few miles in a day. This factory was designed to produce
round-about 42 million bricks annually. And there was a £4.4 million
investment four years ago that increased the productivity
up to 50 million. Claughton produces
frost-resistant product. It's down to the shale from the quarry,
that's a vital key to it. The temperature we fire at and also the durability
of the ceramic bond. That means we can sell this product
into all extreme weathers. There's nowhere in the UK we can't sell to with our durability of
the product at Claughton. Unfortunately, it has to cross the road. It's never been known, certainly
in the last 50, 60 years, to come off at that point,
but it is a possibility. So we have a steel bridge with
big bucket-catchers on the side that would prevent that happening. The rope construction is a
25mm steel rope. Very difficult to get
contractors these days who are skilled in splicing
ropes of that size. We replace the rope every six years. It's a very, very difficult
process, very old, the technology's the 1920s, of course. We did a computer design of
a new ropeway many years ago, and unbelievably, the
computer matched this design in terms of trestle heights and weights to somebody with a
slide rule and a pencil. - There used to be hundreds
of these ropeways around Britain, in industrial sites, mines and quarries. This is the last one still operating
anywhere in the country. It nearly wasn't, the financial crisis
in the late 2000s meant the quarry and brickworks
shut down for a few years. But it was kept in working order
and as of right now, it's still transporting rock. But it has an expiry date.
31st December, 2036. Permission for quarrying
was going to end in 2018 but the local council planning
department granted an extension because the quarry and
brickworks are still operating. There's a lot of shale
still in the hill up there and literally no one objected. I checked the planning report. Environmental agencies, local residents,
everyone was, like, "Yeah fine, keep it running, that works." Now in theory, that deadline
could be extended again but the reason they picked 2036 is that by then, the company
will more or less have quarried everything they can out of that hill. And one of the conditions
of that time extension is that once quarrying is finished,
the ropeway has to come down. The planning report does acknowledge
that it's unique in the country, it's the only one left in Britain. There is some heritage value in it, but, they say, not enough to
justify saving it for posterity. This isn't like an old railway line where, if it's left unmaintained,
it'll just slowly, steadily decay. It could be actively dangerous if the
ropes and towers start to fall apart, particularly when they run
over a road, just there. Unless money is constantly spent
to keep it in working order, it'll decay into an unsafe
blot on the landscape. Which is fair, but I suspect
when that final day comes in about 15 years time,
when the last bucket goes down the ropeway,
there'll be a few people here to say goodbye to it. And until then it'll keep moving shale
without needing any fuel at all. Thank you so much to
all the team at Forterra for showing me around. They did ask me to make
clear that the ropeway is not a tourist attraction. So if you're in the area
and you want to take a couple of pictures
from the road, sure! But then, for their sake,
please keep driving.
So they made use of computers and advanced technology to design a safer, modern version of it. And this resulted in a version made up of crucial elements that are virtually identical to the old ones?
This is pretty amazing! A great job by the original engineers.
ELI5: I understand that using gravity, loaded buckets going down on one side can help lift the other empty buckets up from the other. However, how are the empty buckets able to grip and latch onto the rope securely like from 2:10 after leaving the station?
I laughed out loud when he said nobody objected to the continued quarrying.
It's just so rare these days.
Cerro Gordo, California, an old west mining town, built one of these and had it operational for some time during it's Zinc mining boom in the very early 20th century, but it now lays in ruins.
You can watch the guy that owns the area walking down the mountain along the old tramway path, talking about the history of the area and tramway and exploring the ruins here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpwaUU6sGFA
He did another video walking an equally old abandoned electric tramway on nearby federal land that brought salt out of Death Valley, over a mountain range and down into a valley on the other side. It's one of the most impressive feats of engineering that I've ever seen due to the remoteness and inhospitable terrain and climate out there.
He barely made it out of there and he's an experienced hiker with only a backpack for weight. How the engineers in 1913 got all the building material up, constructed the huge supports structures and buildings and then threaded that tramway cable is a mystery to me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuk0B2itiXo
Wow! We stayed a couple nights near there in a castle near Hornby. The road goes right under the tram and I wondered what the story was.
boo-kit
So that's what this is for!
I just saw one of these in an a crazy 70's Michael Caine movie, Get Carter that had one of these in it. I couldn't tell what it was used for.
I used to live in Lancaster. I cycled under this thing a few times where it goes over the road. I never knew what it was and thought, whatever it was, it as long out of use
I live a few miles away from this and have driven under it quite a few times, so it's great to finally know what it is. You can only see a small section of it from the road... had no idea it went a mile up the hill!