The last Gravity Ropeway

Hi all thought this may be if interest, its very close to me and in my opinion a cleaver feat of engineering.

**LINK**

Hope you enjoy

John

Very clever, and interesting too

I do wish these things wouldn't pan the narrator so much as he speaks, the mechanism is far more interesting and we can hear what he has to say without looking at him

I doubt there were so many which worked by gravity? The local brickworks shifted clay up from the ‘knot-hole (quarry) for many a year. It would have been close to a mile long if it was extended to the far end of the furthest hole. I know it went over one road but it may also have gone under another.

Closed buckets (two maintenance workers - fitter and mate? - died in a fire in a bucket, caused while welding and setting fire to grease, as I recall, in the ‘50s), with only a flimsy net over the road and was replaced by a conveyor belt when they opened up another quarry in the late ‘50s(?) on the other side of the works.

I did my first ‘cut’, with a scraper behind a Caterpillar D-8, to remove the upper ‘calor’ layers of clay when I was 13. I dug ditches down the cutting face and would have stalled out the Cat if the driver had not disengaged the clutch! I don't think I could reach the clutch - certainly not while concentrating on operating the scraper control!

Perhaps Michael Gilligan should pay them a visit, he's in the market for some decent bricks

Great link, thanks John

I lived in Lancaster for a while, and my wife is from Morecambe

I think it should be preserved as an Eco Tourist ride

… Everyone goes down free and the youngsters have to climb up

MichaelG.

Toilets at the bottom, cafe at the top.

I had a student holiday job in't brickworks Ours dug from pits and used cable drawn trucks on rails.
My job was to bring the extra stamping machine on-line: 2 bricks every 15 second and put them on the kiln conveyor - mind-numbing stuff..

pgk

Hi All, It will/would be sad if and when it is dismantled, I hope that somehow it will be saved when the day comes as suggested in 2036 -- I doubt it will be my problem !! It is very quiet and efficient and some years ago there was a plan to scrap it and run trucks to carry the shale, the route was through our village -- after a considerable "fight" with the planners it was abandoned thank goodness !

Conversion to a tourist attraction sounds great but it would need a very large cash injection to come even close to standards necessary to carry people.

Cheers John

Fascinating, but I agree it's not very failsafe if you want to carry people!

Neil

That the one near Caton? (Sorry, Google has made Youtube such a faff, and so stuffed it with idiotic ad breaks through the videos themselves, I've given up on it). I've driven under it quite a few times when driving back from the Dales via Ingleton.

Is the brickworks closing too?

In t'other county, one of the two limestone quarries at Horton-in-Ribblesdale now has a private siding built a few years ago, off the Leeds-Settle-Carlisle line. The other hasn't for some reason (cost?) though it used to, so its crushed rock still goes out by lorry, over the village's two narrow hump-backed bridges separated only by a very sharp bend.

Dow n the road a few miles from there, the Hoffman Kiln (for lime) at Langcliife is worth a look if you're driving through the area.

Yes Nigel it is close to Caton, next Village along at Claughton. Caton is my home town !

No the brickworks isn’t closing as far as we are aware, it was mothballed a few years ago for some time but I understand the raw material is of high value and something special! There were three brickwork’s at one time ! Two in Claughton, East works and West works plus another on the opposite side of the more Brookhouse Brick.

The chap on the video suggests the shale will run out in 15 years or so hence the possible closure however time will tell !

John

My father was a fitter there in the 60's. He told many stories about the ropeway!!!

David

Reminds me of lift locks that work on a similar principle. They always fascinate me. There are a couple of those within my "easy to get to" distance.

Edited By Peter Greene on 16/07/2021 17:11:36

The Falkirk wheel is a good example - they ‘lose’ only a few litres of water during operation. I remember the lift at Hastings (is it still in use?). Unfortunately more people needed a lift to the top than from top to bottom, otherwise it would have been fairly well balanced🙂 .

Thank you John!

One of my old engineering text-books devotes a chapter to ropeway components and designs; and reveals as well as being transport machines (as at Caton) they were also used without buckets, for power-transmission. Basically a V-belt with a very long belt.

Seen the cliff-lift at Bridgenorth? Lynton and Lydmouth had installed a water-balanced one, fed from further up-valley; but at Bridgenorth the river's down at the bottom. Not to be outdone though, the late-19C builders installed pumps... Until they twigged it was rather more efficient simply to use an electric capstan.

Lynton and Lynmouth Cliff Railway is worth a visit.
Powered by a stream that fills the top train tank, when its full, brakes realesed and down the hill it goes.
At the bottom of the hill the water is discharged and the top train is filled and the process repeated.

Run by water from a stream, brilliant.

Mike

Oooo! cutting

David

Yes … it was studiously ignored

MichaelG.

This is very interesting LowTech. Has details of aerial runways many miles long