Nor was this.

Crap maintenance is NEVER an accident.

The Cavalese incident was murder by some scumbag US military scum who deserve a death sentence, or life in prison, neither of which those bastards got.

Tom

TV news pictures just now clearly show at least one cable down with the cabin.

The hook can detach, as likely at Pic de Bure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-...e_car_disaster

Or a cable break can happen, as in the first Cavalese disaster (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavale...disaster_(1976) ), not to mention the second one in 1998 by these murderous Marine flyers mentioned above.

Or the hook stays on but the cable jumps the wheels. Partly what happened at Tbilisi. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990_T...amway_accident






OH may be reassured to know this is still the safest form of ground-based public transport around... http://gondolaproject.com/2015/11/16...ble-cars-safe/

I travel with the Seilbahn almost daily - Seilbahn Rigiblick. It undergoes maintenance about once a month for an entire day, when an alternative bus service is provided. Got stuck once last year for about an hour, and the proactive, bilateral service provided over the intercom was excellent. They asked if everyone was OK, gave info. I seemed to be the designated speaker. It was still scary to just be stuck there, knowing that if something was really wrong then there was no chance. Sent a text to my daughter in jest (in reality meaning that if anything happens to me remember that I love you).

Was happy that everyone was wearing a mask (since then I carried extra masks just in case). We were all happy to finally reach the top safely. But of course there was the token Swiss guy complaining that it had taken too long, 25 mins doesn’t mean an hour, who pays their taxes etc. etc.

This event at Lago Maggiore can only be due to negligence.

Seilbahn Rigiblick is a funicular, not a cable car.

In German it's Standseilbahn vs Luftseilbahn.

In English the terms are somewhat confused because, for example, the cable-trams in San Francisco also get called cable cars.

A funicular has a spring-loaded mechanism that brings the brakes on immediately if there is any loss of tension in the cable. I once experienced a demonstration of this on a special test setup. The funicular stopped quicker than you can even appreciate and even though everybody knew what was about to happen and was holding tight, the event actually threw several people off their seats.

On of the most serious and deadly funicular accidents of all times was the Kaprun incident when a fire broke out and people managed to break out of the car but were killed by fumes in the tunnel. In an open air funicular such as Rigiblick this would be a highly unlikely scenario.

Now I remember that accident. It was horrible. Some people died trying to escape because they were running in the wrong direction. A heartwrenching
tragedy.

No need to hijack a thread. Open the Gaza one and invite us

Think they would have learnt from the Morandi bridge collapse.


Still, poor maintenance isn't purely an Italian thing...guessing eyesight tests should be mandatory for operational engineers? Not sure how this one could be missed for 2 years:

https://www.newschannel5.com/news/i-...er-crack-found

I missed this one by 1/2 hour on my way home from a friend's party:

https://connecticuthistory.org/mianu...ay-in-history/

Tom

Is that you, Knoxville?

It seems it may be a double failure:

the second cabin on the same broken tow cable was stopped by emergency brakes. The passengers had to be lowered down with the emergency lines. While the crashed cabin seem to have run back down the supporting cables, without brakes, until it met a pylon...

I wondered about the automatic brakes yesterday ... I saw the news of the accident in Italy as i was standing in the queue for the funicular to Harder Kulm. So i took a particular interest in the mechanicals :-/

It has a gradient of 64% and it more or less a straight line up, 2.3km.. Inside the cabin it said it had a capacity of 6 tons.. So i guess maybe plus the weight of the car.
It was pulled up by a single cable and I definitely saw no toothed rail or obvious arresting gear.. Would be quite interesting to know if in a cable failure, would it be stopped by brakes on the wheels?? Or something else??

I remember this as I was driving back home from Uni.

Where are you from, Tom? I had you pegged as a crusty old New Hampshirite

CT, originally Danbury, but was living/working in Westport at the time. I arrived 30 minutes after the section fell.

Tom

P.S. Spent a lot of time in VT as well, where one of my sisters (who hated summers in VT as a child) still lives. Even had a VT license and various vehicle registrations.

Lightweights...

We were there yesterday too but instead of using the Funicular, we walked up from the Thunersee and then up the backside of the hill with the plan to take the funicular down.

However there was a massive queue for the funicular going down and we didn't have pre-booked tickets so the kids suggested we run down instead - which we did!

Fantastic weather though!

20min has an eye-witness account from a Swiss guy who was in the cable car before the crashed one.

https://www.20min.ch/video/der-schoc...s-891394420080

They were in front of them in the queue.

Most of my party were not into walking in either direction!

The queue in both directions was ~45 mins.. but good lunch and good view..

We were at Manor Farm, pretty busy all weekend, nice weather during the day but man, Friday night was grim.

Lake Locarno in English.

Tom

Italian RAI is reporting today (translated):

"The investigation of the prosecutor of Verbania

Three arrests for the Mottarone disaster. Among them the manager

Among those arrested is also Luigi Nerini, owner of the railways of Mottarone. For the prosecutor they knew that the emergency brake was deactivated. The disaster caused 14 deaths. Still ongoing technical investigations on the break in the cable.

The first arrests for the disaster of the cableway Stresa-Mottarone occurred during the night. After hours of interrogation to the bitter end three people were taken to the prison of Verbania, among them also Luigi Nerini, 56 years old and owner of the company 'Ferrovie del Mottarone' that manages the operation. Besides Nerini, the people arrested for the accident at the cableway that caused 14 victims are an engineer, the director of the service, and the chief operating officer of the service. The charges against them are multiple manslaughter, negligent disaster and removal of accident prevention equipment aggravated by disaster and very serious injury.

The three detained had been aware of the safety brake system failure for weeks. The chief prosecutor of Verbania, Olimpia Bossi, affirmed that.

Already from the initial reviews the braking system appeared to be tampered with. A device, a so-called fork, was used to disable the emergency brakes. It was not an oversight, but a deliberate choice to avoid ongoing inefficiencies and blockages of the cableway. When the cable snapped the emergency brake did not work. In addition to Nerini, an engineer and the chief operating officer of the service are in custody."

https://www.rainews.it/dl/rainews/ar...80ed9af78.html

Unbelievable.