Paranapiacaba cable car

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Paranapiacaba train station

The Paranapiacaba cable car , the Serra Incline , was a cable car between Raiz da Serra and Paranapiacaba and a section of the Santos – Jundiaí railway from Santos to São Paulo in Brazil .

Serra Velha Incline

Serrabreque - brake van

As part of the Santos – Jundiaí railway line, the Paranapiacaba cable car was built with the 1,600 millimeter gauge common in Brazil . It went into operation in 1866. The maximum gradient was 10.3 percent. It overcame a height difference of 773 meters and was 8 km long. The trains were carried over four cable levels, each of which was driven by a fixed steam engine of 110 kW (150 PS). Between the four rope sections there were train stations with a horizontal track position, which made it possible to attach the train to the rope of the following ramp. Brake cars connected to the rope on the mountain side ( Serrabreque ) were used to connect with the rope and to secure the train .

The line was two-pronged . Operation was based on the system of a funicular railway : a train going uphill and a train going downhill were carried on the same rope at the same time and thus partially offset the weight. The difference between the two train weights could not exceed 36 tons.

Serra Nova Incline

Locobreque with a passenger car in the siding of a section of rope

To increase the transport capacity, the Serra Nova Incline was built from 1895–1901 parallel to the old route using the same technology. It had a length of 10.98 km and five cable sections, each of which was driven by a steam engine of 221 kW (300 hp). The maximum gradient could be reduced to 8 percent, the transport weight increased to 155 tons and the difference between the train traveling uphill and downhill to 60 tons.

The operation now took place with brake locomotives, locobreques , which were lined up at the end of the trains on the valley side, clung to the rope on the ramps and moved the train to the next rope on the horizontal sections under its own power. Passenger traffic took place at the end of operations with diesel multiple units .

The Serra Nova Incline was in operation until 1982.

Rack railway

The Serra Nova Incline remained an operational bottleneck on the Santos – Jundiaí railway line. Therefore, between 1913 and 1922, there were initial considerations to convert the section to gear operation. However, these failed due to the global economic crisis . It was not until the 1960s that these ideas were taken up again. The route of the Serra Velha Incline was used for this, but deviated from it in some places in order not to fall below a minimum curve radius of 300 meters. The cog railway was built from 1968 and finally put into operation in 1974. As an alternative, the Serra Nova Incline was kept operational until 1982 because the rack railway initially posed considerable technical problems.

museum

Museum in Paranapiacaba

In the former railway depot in Paranapiacaba there is now a railway museum and the uppermost ramp of the Serra Nova Incline will also be preserved as a museum - although it will not be operational.

literature

  • José E. de Castro Buzelin et al. a .: A Ferrovia de Minas, Rio e São Paulo . Mémoria do Trem, Rio do Janeiro 2002, ISBN 85-86094-04-8 .
  • Walter Hefti : Cable cars all over the world. Inclined cable planes, funiculars, cable cars . Birkhäuser, Basel 1975, ISBN 3-7643-0726-9 .
  • Hans Schlunegger: New locomotives for rack and pinion operation on the Santos - Jundiaí line in Brazil . In: Eisenbahn-Revue International , Vol. 17 (2010), Issue 7, ISSN  1421-2811 .
  • Theo Stolz u. a .: The rack and pinion operation on the Santos - Jundiaí line . In: Eisenbahn-Revue International , Vol. 14 (2007), Issue 7, ISSN  1421-2811 .

Web links

Commons : Paranapiacaba Rail Cable Car  - Collection of images, videos and audio files