What you didn't know about ropeways

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I see this appeared in your recommended videos recently, too!

👍︎︎ 23 👤︎︎ u/eveningsand 📅︎︎ Jan 14 2022 🗫︎ replies

Not even close to how I thought these things worked. 1 motor!?

👍︎︎ 17 👤︎︎ u/asterios_polyp 📅︎︎ Jan 14 2022 🗫︎ replies

The clicking and clanking of the mechanical transmission of power is just amazing.

👍︎︎ 8 👤︎︎ u/aZamaryk 📅︎︎ Jan 14 2022 🗫︎ replies

The modern lifts are way less complicated, more trouble free operation. Detachable lifts are a marvel of technology.

👍︎︎ 5 👤︎︎ u/aSkiLiftMechanic 📅︎︎ Jan 14 2022 🗫︎ replies

The quiet at the end surprised me.
Imagine, a lunch break meaning an actual break.

👍︎︎ 3 👤︎︎ u/CrazedMagician 📅︎︎ Jan 14 2022 🗫︎ replies

Never before seen a gear with a cooler 🤗 I missed the constant rope inspection unit... but a great video 🙌🙌

👍︎︎ 2 👤︎︎ u/M4R3D 📅︎︎ Jan 14 2022 🗫︎ replies

That was great, thanks for posting

👍︎︎ 2 👤︎︎ u/gsbees 📅︎︎ Jan 14 2022 🗫︎ replies

I like how he refers to it a a rope. Many people cal them cables but they are in fact a steel rope. I don’t know why it annoys me when people call them the wrong name but it does

👍︎︎ 2 👤︎︎ u/CMWalsh88 📅︎︎ Jan 14 2022 🗫︎ replies

How much is boss man making? He seems really knowledgeable.

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/whoa_dude_fangtooth 📅︎︎ Jan 15 2022 🗫︎ replies
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Hello, Sandra here. As a child, have you ever  dreamt of getting behind the scenes of a huge   ropeway with many many moving parts? Well, in  this video you're going to get a tour through   the "Gondelbahn Flaschen" where we're going to do  exactly that. "Gondelbahn" is German for gondola   ropeway and this is a particularly illustrative  one because it is an older model with a crazy   number of moving, rattling, rotating, humming,  shifting, shaking components that all interact   with each other, forming a well-orchestrated  mechanical symphony. I couldn't get enough of   watching it, so I asked the operations manager  if I could come to take a few shots. Turns out,   it was my lucky day! He not only explained to me  everything from top to bottom, but he also led   me deeply behind the scenes, allowing me to film  at places a regular passenger could never access. We were standing up there with he even radioed  to slow down the rope for me to get a better   shot! So sit back and enjoy this video as a  VIP-tour through this most amazing machine. You will rarely hear me say this, but for once  I actually borrowed the car and drove there.   Flaschen is located in the Alps, in Valais,  Switzerland, next to the famous hot springs of   Leukerbad. The ropeway was built in 1995 and  consists of two parts with an intermediate station   in between. The length of both parts totals about  2.3 kilometers and the altitude ranges from 1500   meters to 2300 meters above sea level. Once  arrived at Torrent, you'll find yourself at a   peaceful alp that's not particularly busy at the  summer time. People are doing the usual alpine   activities, like taking a weekend hike - some  with a dog - hanging out, enjoying the sun or   just going for a bike ride. Things are looking  differently in the winter time, when Torrent   is a very popular ski and snowboard arena,  but we are in september and things are calm. Arrived at the top station, I meet Yannick  Murmann, the operations manager in charge   of all things ropeway here. He explains to  me every single bit and I hope I can pass   his information and explanations  as correctly as I possibly can. Here is the basics: as the name suggests,  a gondola ropeway consists of small cabins,   the gondolas, that are transported on a rope.   When entering a station, each gondola is  detached from the rope and decelerated. When it arrives at the platform, the doors open  to let people out and in while moving slowly. If   there are bikes or sledges to carry, the personnel  attaches or detaches them during this phase.   Once the slow track is over, the gondola is  accelerated to match the speed of the rope   and then reattached to it to continue its journey. Stop! This is probably where I should tell you  that I might have been lying all along.   In fact we're not looking at one, but two  ropeways, connected by a middle station,   so here's a poor schematic drawing of the two  cycles. These are two ropeways that are actually   completely independent One set of gondolas cycles  through the lower ropeway, while the other set   travels the upper one. Remember that at every  wheel the gondolas are detached from the rope. The   two wheels in the middle are in the same building  and people can exit one ropeway and immediately   board the other. Now we add two red lines,  representing an extension of the slow itinerary.   As you can see, the gondolas arriving at the top  of the lower ropeway are now transferred to the   bottom of the upper ropeway and vice versa. Now  we have a single ropeway with a middle station.   So, is Flaschen a single ropeway or two  independent ones? Well it's actually both.   The extension represented by the red lines can be  enabled or disabled by shifting a switch, kind of   like a railway switch. Under normal operation,  Flaschen operates as a single ropeway and both   sections are synchronized in speed. When one slows  down or stops, the command is relayed to the other   as well and they act as a single machine. However,  in case of storm or a technical fault, if one   section cannot operate, the switch is flipped  and the other section can operate independently. So by now you probably got an idea of how many  moving parts each section consists of. I was   extremely amazed to hear they're almost all driven  by one single motor. So let's talk about power,   and not in the political sense. Three times 400  volts electrical power is supplied from the left   and first passes through a series of electrical  filters that protect the power grid from any   electrical noise generated by the motor. These  three boxes are massive capacitors designed for   144 kvar. The second door hides a thyristor  which transforms the AC current into DC.   Modern ropeways run directly on AC but  this older model is still using a DC motor. The process of turning off a relay of such  a big motor usually generates a huge spark   that will bolt out of the cabinet, but the white  round thin covers prevent this from happening.   Yannick mentions that such systems  are no longer being built these days.   This third cabinet further contains a thermal  relay which breaks the circuit if there is too   much current flowing. The three tubes here  are actually resistors for this circuit.   The power is finally sent to the motor. Despite of  its massive size, this is a perfectly regular DC   motor and runs with coils, a technology you maybe  already know from your latest Arduino project. The motor also acts as a brake and a generator.  It recovers energy and feeds it back to the grid   whenever there are more passengers going down than  up. Also, 90 of all times when the ropeway needs   to slow down or stop, the braking is done  entirely electrical. Cooling of the motor   is provided by this filtered air inlet which  blows large amounts of air through the motor.   Following the motor shaft, the next thing we  encounter is the first hydraulic brake. Hydraulic   pressure keeps the brake open during operation,  so if anything fails, the brake will be closed   by a spring automatically. This is the hydraulic  unit that controls the brakes and the emergency   propulsion, but more on that propulsion later. The  next stage in the pipeline is this transmission.   It runs so hot that it has its own cooling system  attached. At the time of shooting the footage,   the ropeway has just started, but the  transmission is already warm to touch. And here's the whole thing again with sound. The planetary gear acts as another  transmission, further increasing the torque   and allowing reduction of the size of  the kingshaft. It drives the big wheel,   powering the rope and transporting  all the gondolas in the upper section.   Directly connected to that wheel is the secondary  hydraulic brake. If something serious goes wrong,   the hydraulic pressure drops and these emergency  brakes brings the ropeway to a rough stop.   Also, there is a centrifugal switch that opens  when wheel spins too fast. Imagine a situation   like in the country of Georgia where a seat  ropeway went backwards with insane speed.   If this situation was about to develop here,  the centrifugal forces at the edge of the wheel   would exceed the switch's rating and it would  flip. It would open the hydraulic system   and pressure would drop, so this would cause the  springs in the hydraulic brakes to force them   closed and the ropeway would stop immediately,  effectively preventing such a disaster. But what happens in case of a power outage?  Then this diesel motor is used to power the   hydraulic pump which is in slightly lighter  blue. The black tubes lead up to these yellow   hydro motors. While disconnected under normal  operations, the levers can be used to connect   them to the big gear on the yellow wheel, and then  they can power the ropeway until everybody is off.   On this roadway, this is intended as an  emergency propulsion and it's only used   to unload all the gondolas. Then they shut  off the ropeway until the power is back. Now let's get to the fancy stuff! So far, this is what you see by observing  closely, but now Yannick leads me up that   ladder and he's about to blow my mind! First of  all, I realize that all of these moving parts   are connected to the main wheel and there are  no additional motors! The same holds for the   bottom station that has no motor at all! It  is the rope that transfers the power from   the upper station to the lower. The motor  moving all of this is over a kilometer away   and there is no need to sync the motor  speed of the two sister stations - they   are mechanically connected and physically part  of one single insane machine! This is incredible. Close-ups time! Note how each wheel is geared to run a  little bit faster than the previous one,   accelerating the gondola. Wow, this is awesome! I'm a 10 year old boy again. Now let's look at the arrival. The clicking sound is produced by a spring in  every wheel. While more modern ropeways have   those wheels all the way through, this older  model has a belt taking over the gondolas.   More precisely there are two belts and the top  one is slightly faster than the bottom one.   The reason for this is to re-clock the gondolas  so that their intervals are continuously corrected   and the distances are kept. The clocking can be  defined by setting this variable transmission.   Note how the top belt slightly catches up  and grabs the gondola, defining its pace.   when clocked perfectly, the gondola is  captured at the middle of the track, but   about a meter of deviance can be tolerated. This  is a relict that does not exist on newer ropeways.   Now, if you've seen my previous video on ski  lifts, you know that i have become obsessed with   clamps last year. This is a particularly cool  clamp because it is mechanically detached from   and reattached to the rope at every station. In  summer time the ropeway only runs at 2.5 meters   per second, which is half of its maximum speed. So  we should be able to take a relaxed closer look. Holy crap! This is only half speed??   The whole framework is shaking! Let's look at it  again, maybe we can catch glimpse if we repeat it. Okay this is really hard to see. As a  passenger the ropeway seemed much slower to me. Seeing my desperate attempts, with my  fingers only centimeters away from the   clamps thundering by, Yannick grabs his  radio and does something incredible! I have no words for this - he slowed  down the whole ropeway, twice,   just to let me film these clamps! I'm overwhelmed  and deeply grateful. Here's the moment again when   a separation occurs. Look how the clamp  suddenly stops while rope keeps moving. And here is a shot at 2.5 meters  per second, normal summer speed,   the video however slowed  down to one quarter speed. I tried to retract my hand and the  camera at the very last moment. The sheer power of this  ropeway is scarily impressive. As a child, I was, like many, scared to  be squeezed by the doors of the gondolas. So how do these work? Again, Yannick  patiently explains and demonstrates,   using a parked gondola. The white wheel below the  clamp is connected to the doors through a wire.   By moving it up, the doors  are first unlocked and then   opened up. This is inverted by pushing it back  down after which the doors are safely locked.   This is what happens every time the  gondola enters or exits the station. But what happens if a child gets trapped between  the doors? Hidden under the floor plate, there   is a spring that is connected between the wire  and the doors. Here is a shot from a dismantled   gondola undergoing maintenance. This long spring  buffers the traction from the wire and while the   doors do squeeze, the force is well calculated, so  that nobody gets hurt. But the gondola would then   be traveling with the doors open and passengers  would be in risk of taking a lethal fall!   This is why this red stick is placed very closely  to the closed doors. If the doors do not close for   some reason, then they touch this stick and the  sensor triggers, bringing the whole ropeway to   an emergency stop. In addition, to verify that  the doors are not only closed but also locked,   this red plate is placed at the height of the  wide wheel triggering an emergency stop if   the wheel is higher than normal. A hand in the  doors is enough to trigger the emergency stop.   This rarely happens in summertime, but in  winter, passengers tend to get their ski   sticks stuck between the doors, triggering the  emergency stop even multiple times in a busy day.   Yannick then takes me to the control room where  the staff member we heard on the radio is working. This panel shows the speed for each section and  whether the ropeway is producing or consuming   energy. This computer screen visualizes  the whole ropeway. Gondolas can be flagged   using this yellow button, and then they  will show up in red on a computer screen,   causing an acoustic signal to sound when they  enter the next station. This is useful for   instance when baggage must be unloaded. This is  the speed potentiometer that was mentioned on the   radio communication. When the wind speeds exceed  the value on the left in kilometers per hour,   the speed of the ropeway must be  limited to the value on the right.   Next we see the remote control system that is used  to synchronize both sections of the ropeway. The   entire communication and monitoring goes through  this panel. There are two lines connecting the   stations: the switch line, and the phone line. The  entire communication, including emergency stop,   goes through the phone line, as well as,  well, the telephone. The switch line is a   safety wire that is under constant voltage.  If the voltage gets too high or too low,   an emergency stop will be triggered. This happens  for instance if the rope derails at a mast. Here is how this works: Next to the control room, there is a repair and  maintenance shop. This door allows a forklift   to transport gondolas into the shop. Every year,  16 gondolas are completely dismantled into parts.   These boxes contain dismantled clamps  from the gondolas undergoing maintenance.   all of these parts are shipped to  the ropeway manufacturer Garaventa,   where they will be thoroughly checked for  micro cracks using x-ray technology. While   the high-tech checks are done by the specialists,  all the regular maintenance and even disassembly   and reassembly of the gondolas are done by a team  of five working here under Yannick's supervision. After this, Yannick is taking his lunch break, so  I bid him goodbye and take the ropeway back down.   Yannick has informed all the others on duty  about my video project and they generously   let me go and film everywhere. Here is the  middle station again. Note how the upper   ring of the lower section is skipped.  The ropeway is operating in joint mode   and the gondola is directly transferred  through the lower ring of the upper section. The staff member on the bottom station even  turns on the light for me and asks me if I'd   like to also film the garage. Well of course!  This mechanism transports the gondolas inside   the garage. As the ropeway only goes half speed  during summer, only half the gondolas are running   and the others are currently in storage.  This garage can hold all 100 gondolas of   the   ropeway. But sadly, this will be for another  day. I will have to get going and   the last thing i'd like to show  you is how incredibly quiet this   huge machine gets when they shut it  down for the summer's lunch break. Sleep tight, beautiful giant. Gondola ropeways only have a life expectancy  of about 30 years and Flaschen is already   26 years old. By 2030, this kind of  ropeways will have become a rarity.   I hope you enjoyed this experience as much  as I did. I owe a huge "thank you!" to   Yannick and his staff this video was only  made possible thanks to the enormous time   they offered me and all of their patient  explanations. It was a real adventure. Let me know if you like this kind of  video. Maybe I'll get lucky again and   I'll be able to film the garaging procedure of  a ropeway or seat lift someday. In any case,   there are so many amazing things in this world  and who knows what my next video will be about.   In the meantime, keep your eyes open and enjoy  your life! Goodbye and see you next time.
Info
Channel: kalsan15
Views: 211,146
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: gondelbahn, ropeway, detach, detachable ropeway, Flaschen, Leukerbad, behind the scenes, VIP tour, technology, machine, mountains, mechanics, tech, engineering, gear, maintenance, explained
Id: HhI_1Yi5CtQ
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 23min 19sec (1399 seconds)
Published: Tue Oct 05 2021
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