Xóm Cúc – Ban Naphao cable car
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| Route length: | 42 km | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The cable car Xóm Cúc – Ban Naphao was a connection in freight traffic in French Indochina from the top of the railway line Tân Ằp – Thakhet in Vietnam to Ban Naphao in Laos .
construction
The construction of the railway line Tân AP Thakhet went because of the terrain caused technical difficulties in the area of the ascent to the border mountains between Vietnam and Laos to the Vietnamese side only reluctantly. In particular, little progress was made with the necessary tunnels. Due to this slow construction progress, the French colonial power built a 42-kilometer cable car from 1930, roughly parallel to the planned railway line , which was used exclusively for the transport of goods. In December 1933, it went into operation together with the Tân Ằp – Xóm Cúc section of the Tân Ằp – Thakhet railway line.
Infrastructure
The route led from the then operational head of the Vietnamese railway network in Xóm Cúc over the 418 meters high Mụ Giạ pass to Ban Naphao. In doing so, she conquered the steepest parts of the border mountains between Vietnam and Laos. There were six intermediate stations between the two terminus of the cable car. Each transport container could carry 200 kilograms. The cable car route was accompanied by a road to ensure the maintenance of the facility.
business
Operation of the cable car was only planned in the dry season from November to April, three days a week. While a rail connection had been established on the Vietnamese side, goods transport on the Laotian side had to be continued with trucks . A transport from Tân Ằp to Thakhet took about five days. In the 1936/1937 season, the cable car carried 1,197 tons from Vietnam to Laos, but only 348 tons in the opposite direction. This corresponds to 7725 loads or an average of around 323 transport containers per operating day.
The End
The cable car is said to have been in operation until the mid-1950s. During the Vietnam War , the Mụ Giạ pass was an important part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail and was bombed often and heavily by the US Air Force . The cable car systems, as far as they were still standing, were also destroyed. After the war, all of the metal previously used here was removed and scrapped. Today only the concrete foundations of the masts remain in some places.
literature
- BR Whyte: The Railway Atlas of Thailand, Laos and Cambodia . White Lotus Co Ltd, Bangkok 2010, ISBN 978-974-480-157-9 , p. 152 u. Plate 25.
Web links
- The railway which became an aerial tramway English report with pictures
Coordinates: 17 ° 40 ′ 0 ″ N , 105 ° 47 ′ 0 ″ E