Caracas Cable Car
The Caracas Cable Car ( Teleférico de Caracas ) was a cable car opened in 1956 that connected Caracas , Venezuela across the Ávila massif north of the city with the coastal town of Macuto on the Caribbean Sea and as an access to the Hotel Humboldt on the mountain range served. It remained in operation until the late 1970s. This was followed by several unsuccessful attempts to reopen it until 1988. Then it fell into disrepair.
In 2000, the first section from Caracas to the Ávila massif was replaced by a new gondola lift . In 2007 the state took over the railway. In 2011 the mountain range was named Parque nacional Waraira Repano after its former local name ; since then the cable car Sistema Teleférico Warairarepano has been called.
In July 2014, the preparatory work began to build a gondola that had been planned for a long time in the section from Warairarepano to Macuto.
Cable car and hotel complex (1956)
At the instigation of General Marcos Pérez Jiménez , the then President of Venezuela, a cable car was built from Caracas to the ridge of the Ávila massif above the city, on which at the same time the 15-storey high, round tower of the luxurious, about 600 m away Hotel Columbus was built. A wide path led from the mountain station to the hotel, which was only a little higher up, but the distance could also be covered by a small cable car. On the other side of the ridge, a section led from the mountain station to Galipán , 400 m below, another section to San José, and finally a third to Macuto.
The cable car served several purposes: On the one hand, with it and the Hotel Humboldt, a tourist highlight of the capital of Venezuela was created. On the other hand, it served as an auxiliary connection to the sea and the airport if there were problems with one of the bridges or tunnels on the A2 national road. Secretly what she conceived as an escape route for the dictatorial president. The motor of the first section was in the mountain station and could be switched off from there, the motors of the other sections were in San José. This would have provided a sufficient head start to reach an airplane or ship for the escape abroad.
The cable car built by the Gesellschaft für Förderanlagen Ernst Heckel , Saarbrücken , was a further development of the Schauinslandbahn built in 1930 . With its four sections and a length of over 10 km, it was not only significantly larger, but the largest of its kind in the world. As with the Schauinslandbahn, it was a circulating cable car that, unlike today's 3S cable cars , only had one carrying cable, but two traction cables. In the stations, the cabins were automatically decoupled from the circulating traction ropes, decelerated and moved onto a hanging rail, on which they were guided in the opposite direction after the passengers got on and off, accelerated, reconnected to the traction ropes and guided onto the carrying rope there .
The cabins looked very similar to those of a large aerial tramway at the time: a high suspension system with a ladder for the service personnel connected the cab to the drive, which was driven by a roller battery with four rollers on the suspension cable. The cabins in the section between Caracas and the mountain station were bright red, while the cabins on the other side of the mountain were painted in different colors. There was a presidential cabin designed only for eleven people with a gold-colored exterior, a hospital cabin in white with a green cross and an open load carrier.
The first section was completed on September 14, 1955 and, after a seven-month trial run, was inaugurated on April 19, 1956 by then President Marcos Pérez Jiménez, the Hotel Humboldt and the sections on the other side of the mountain were opened on December 29, 1956.
Technical details
The cable car had a maximum speed of 7.5 m / s (27 km / h) but was usually slower. It had a total horizontal length of 10,561 m and overcame a height difference of 1,110 m between Caracas and the Ávila massif and 2,005 m between this and the station on the coast, a total difference in height of 3,115 m.
Estación Maripérez - Estación Monte Àvila
The building of the Estación Maripérez valley station in Caracas consisted of a 29.5 m long and 14.9 m high, vaulted and multiply folded concrete shell that covered all the facilities. It still serves as the new valley station today.
From the valley station located 995 m above sea level ( 10 ° 30 ′ 45 ″ N , 66 ° 53 ′ 12 ″ W ) the train went to the 2105 m high mountain station Estación Monte Àvila on the ridge of the Ávila massif ( 10 ° 32 ′ 27.4 " N , 66 ° 52 '48.8" W ). This section had a horizontal length of 3200 m and an inclined length of 3400 m with a height difference of 1110 m.
The suspension ropes were divided into two sections, which were anchored in the valley and mountain stations by several turns around the strong, central concrete pillar. Approximately in the middle of the section there was a supporting rope guy pillar on the ridge called Papelón, on which the supporting ropes were tensioned from the mountain and valley side over large pulleys by weights several tons that were freely suspended in the pillar construction. The cabins were pulled from the continuous pulling rope over metal rails onto the respective other carrying rope section. In the section below this guy pillar there were four cable car supports with heights between 9 m and 36.5 m, in the upper section there were two supports with heights of 21.5 m and 31.5 m. The cable car had its largest span of 1150 m between the guy pillar and pillar no. The pillars and supports were removed when the new railway was built.
The drive motors were located in the mountain station and were primarily controlled from there. The tensioning device for the pulling ropes was located in the valley station.
Estación Monte Àvila - Estación El Iron
From the mountain station Estación Monte Àvila it went over two supports, a height difference of 393 m and an inclined length of 900 m or a horizontal length of 815 m down to the angled station Estación El Iron ( 10 ° 32 ′ 54 ″ N , 66 ° 52 ′ 44 ″ W ) near the 1712 m above sea level. d. M. situated village of San Antonio de Galipán . The carrying ropes anchored in the mountain station were tensioned by weights hanging in shafts. The suspension ropes of the third section were anchored here. The tensioning devices for the pull cables of both sections were also located here.
Estación El Iron - Estación Loma de Caballo
Between the Estación El Iron and the one near San José at 1184 m above sea level. d. M. located angular station Estación Loma de Caballo ( 10 ° 34 ′ 25 ″ N , 66 ° 53 ′ 25.2 ″ W ) there was a height difference of 528 m, an inclined length of 3100 m and a horizontal length of 3079 m as well five supports and a supporting cable guy pillar. In the Estación Loma de Caballo were the controls and drive units for the upper and the following section and the anchorages for the suspension cables of both sections.
Estación Loma de Caballo - Estación El Cojo
Up to at Macuto at an altitude of 100 above sea level. d. At the valley station Estación El Cojo ( 10 ° 36 ′ 15 ″ N , 66 ° 52 ′ 57.3 ″ W ) there was a further difference in altitude of 1084 m, an inclined length of 3700 m and a horizontal length of 3467 m. Here, too, a guy pillar divided the supporting ropes, and there were also 6 supports, including the highest support in the entire system at 78.63 m. The building of the Estación El Cojo with its arched concrete shell corresponds to that of the Estación Maripérez on the other side.
Hotel Humboldt
The Hotel Humboldt was about 600 m from the mountain station at the end of the ridge at 2250 m above sea level. d. M. and, like the cable car, opened on December 29, 1956. It had all the amenities of a luxury hotel, including a swimming pool with a pool up to 2.8 m deep. Its 15-storey round tower contained the usual functional rooms on the ground floor and 5 large room units on each of the floors above, which were divided into sleeping and lounge areas by partition walls. The hotel offered a wide view of Caracas on one side and the Caribbean Sea on the other, and with its high tower was visible from afar. A wide, paved path led from the cable car station to the hotel. But you could also have a small gondola use with round, fixed-grip gondolas for eight people.
Material ropeway
A material ropeway ran parallel to the cable car , except between the El Irón and Ávila stations .
history
The Hotel Humboldt was managed by the Consejo Nacional de Hotelería y Turismo (CONAHOTU) for 20 years . However, the hotel with its comparatively few rooms and the entire facility, which is aimed at a wealthy public, could not generate the income that would have been necessary for its long-term operation. In 1977 both the hotel and the cable car were therefore closed. After some renovation work, the hotel was used as a hotel management school from 1986 and the cable car was put back into operation. In 1988 this attempt also ended; after that, the cable car and the hotel were left to their own devices for 12 years and fell into disrepair. During the construction of the new gondola between Caracas and the Àvila massif, the remains of the old cable car were removed, only the buildings of the valley and mountain stations were reused. On the other side of the mountain, everything was left to the wind, the weather, the vandalism and the jungle. At least until 2008, hanging cabins and cable car supports with their ropes could still be seen in the stations; In a hard-to-reach place near the Estación Loma de Caballo , a ghost gondola also hung on the suspension cable, of which little more than the tubular frame and parts of the roof were left.
Gondola lift (2000)
It was not until 2000 that the Inversora Turística Caracas company received the concession from the government to rebuild the cable car. This went hand in hand with the conversion of the ridge into Parque Ávila Mágica with various tourist attractions, including an ice rink , and the reopening of the Hotel Humboldt .
First of all, Doppelmayr built a gondola lift (8MGD) between the Estación Maripérez and the Estación Monte Àvila with a circumferential rope and cabins for eight people, in which the existing station buildings were reused. There are 47 tubular steel supports with a diameter of 50 cm on the route. On the hillside above the valley station of a required high voltage transmission line , a transmission line crossing , in which the region of the cable car was completely built from a steel framework. There are 73 normal cabins, 10 cabins for VIPs, one cabin for emergency transport and 2 trucks. The cable car has a maximum speed of 7.5 m / s and then a capacity of 1000 people / hour, but usually runs more slowly, so that about 15 minutes are required for the 3.4 km route.
Due to local difficulties, however, the operator was unable to realize the planned new line from Monte Àvila to the coast. For this reason, the license was withdrawn from him in August 2007 and the facility was transferred to state ownership.
Later the Parque Avila Magica was renamed Parque Warairarepano . Since then, the cable car has been called Sistema Teleférico Warairarepano (STW) . In 2015, extensive maintenance and repair work was carried out, for which operations were interrupted for a month and resumed on June 2, 2015.
Future cable car to the coast
The state announced plans to renew the second section from Monte Ávila to the coast ( Sistema Teleférico Warairarepano – Macuto ). The Estación Warairarepano and Estación El Cojo are to be reused and a completely new Estación La Hacienda and an Estación San José are to be built near the old station. Preparatory work for this began in 2014.
See also
Web links
- Photos of the new and some of the old cable car
- Teleferico de Caracas. Detailed presentation from funivie.org (Italian, 68 S; PDF 8.9 MB)
- Teleférico de Caracas. Detailed presentation from funivie.org (Spanish, 69 S; PDF 13.9 MB)
- VENTEL Venezolana de Teleféricos, Gobierno Bolivariano de Venezuela, Ministerio del Poder Popular para el Turismo. Website of the state cable car organization
Individual evidence
- ↑ The information in this section is largely based on the detailed description by funivie.org in Teleferico de Caracas.
- ↑ On the history of the cable car ( Memento of the original from June 15, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Spanish) on the VENTEL website
- ↑ Historical photo of the Hotel Humboldt with the mountain station ( memento of the original from June 15, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b c Hotel Humboldt (Su historia y actualidad) ( Memento of the original from June 15, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the VENTEL website
-
↑ A board on the cable car has the following text:
"El 2 de Agosto de 2007, el gobierno del Presidente Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias, recuperó para el pueblo soberano de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela el sistema teleferico Warairarepano."
( On August 2, 2007, the government of President Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías recovered the Warairarepano cable car system for the sovereign people of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. ) - ↑ Reopening after maintenance and repair work ( Memento of the original from June 15, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Spanish)
- ↑ Teleférico Macuto
Map with all coordinates: 
