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.
I see this appeared in your recommended videos recently, too!
Not even close to how I thought these things worked. 1 motor!?
The clicking and clanking of the mechanical transmission of power is just amazing.
The modern lifts are way less complicated, more trouble free operation. Detachable lifts are a marvel of technology.
The quiet at the end surprised me.
Imagine, a lunch break meaning an actual break.
Never before seen a gear with a cooler 🤗 I missed the constant rope inspection unit... but a great video 🙌🙌
That was great, thanks for posting
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
How much is boss man making? He seems really knowledgeable.