Poma 2000

Poma 2000 below the Hôtel de Ville mountain station, 2006

One of the four railcars of the former tram on the Place des Droits de l'Homme

The Poma 2000 in the northern French city of Laon was a driverless funicular system on nitrogen-filled rubber tires. It was in operation from 1989 to 2016. The official name was "Poma 2000 de Laon", locally it was just called "le Poma". The system connected the train station located on the level with the old town located on an island mountain , over a distance of almost 1.5 kilometers it overcame a height difference of 100 meters. There were three stops: the Gare valley station ("train station"), the Vaux subway station and the Hôtel de Ville mountain station ("town hall"). The operator was the urban transport company Transports Urbains Laonnois (TUL), which also maintains the inner-city bus service.

history

The system opened on February 4, 1989. It was created as the successor to the Tramway de Laon cog railway, largely on its previous route.

The rack railway, which connected the old town with the station between 1899 and 1971, had to overcome a maximum gradient of 13% uphill in static friction operation. During the descent, a rack between the rails served as a service brake, which is why the museum railcar on display on the Place des Droits de l'Homme looks like a "real" rack railway vehicle. In fact, it was built as such. After it had been found that the four railcars could cope with the incline in adhesion mode, the gear drives were removed again.

The Poma was designed by the French company Pomagalski from Voreppe (near Grenoble ), a manufacturer of ski lifts and mountain railways that operates the joint venture POMA-OTIS Transportation Systems with the elevator manufacturer Otis .

System and route description

Route and stations

Cabin at the entrance to the Vaux station, 2014

Compared to classic funiculars, the Poma of Laon had several technical features: Instead of steel wheels, the vehicles ran on rubber tires, and the track was guided by the lateral delimitation of the U-shaped flat steel lanes. The route was shaped like a large horseshoe and was therefore mostly curvy. The gradient conditions were very uneven, on the shorter section (approx. 1/3 of the route) between the valley station and Vaux the route was relatively flat with only 2% gradient, on the remaining 2/3 between Vaux and the mountain station the gradient was up to to 13%. Outside the terminal stops, the route consisted of two lanes, which were laid out in the form of a long track loop and pulled apart at two points (in the area of the Vaux station and halfway between Vaux and the mountain station) to give way . This resulted from the fact that the Poma used the narrow route of the former cogwheel tram above the Vaux station. In the lower third, the route was rebuilt on an elevated basis.

There were two separate drive cables for the sections of the valley station - Vaux and Vaux - mountain station. These were closed rope rings (endless loops) that were always moved in the same direction by the drive motors located at the stations. The wagons were not permanently connected to the drive ropes, but could (when the system was at a standstill) disconnect or couple from the drive ropes and thus switch from the upper to the lower section of the route. As a result, three cars could be used on the route as planned, two each in the upper section Vaux - Hôtel de Ville and one running in the flatter and shorter section Vaux - Gare. The individual wagons drove the route continuously. They changed the drive cables at the Vaux station so that the passengers did not have to change trains.

Vehicles and operation

The railway's fleet of cars consisted of four vehicles, with at least one usually standing as a replacement vehicle in the car hall at the valley station. Each vehicle had 12 seats and 28 standing places. The travel time between the final stops was around 3½ minutes. Between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., a 2½ to 6-minute cycle was run, depending on requirements. The rule was a 5-minute cycle, with two cabins that met at the Vaux station on the route. Outside of these times as well as all day on Sundays and public holidays, operations were inactive.

At the end of August 2016, operations were shut down for cost reasons; the last trip took place on August 29. Since then, buses every 20 minutes have replaced the train that previously ran every 5 minutes.

See also: List of funiculars