how were cable cars/ ropeways built in the Alps? How was all the construction material transported to the top of the mountain?

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how were cable cars/ ropeways built in the Alps? How was all the construction material transported to the top of the mountain?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

It’s a lot of work, that’s for sure, but they mostly build those in the summer. There’s no snow, or at least significantly less. Off road trucks with experienced personnel can definitely manage riding up and building on the slopes without the snow with only a bit of planning and a lot of experience.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Really depends on terrain and height and time of construction

Nowdays by helicopters, if it’s not too high..

If there is good roadway, then by cars

Otherwise by mules or other heavy lifting animals (especially in early 19th century)

Anonymous 0 Comments

There are often photos. Like the cables across the grandcanyon. Bridges made by people <often indigenous > carrying long lengths of cable down the south Kaibab or Bright Angel trail.

Anonymous 0 Comments

They just built the building on top and ran the cables.

I saw pics from the same period, early 20th century, of when they built the first metro tunnels and how they demolished buildings, all done by manual labour with picks.

They used carts, pulleys and elbow grease. You’d be amazed to see how they were building bridges in antiquity: https://youtu.be/tggEdsaWbpQ

Anonymous 0 Comments

Most of the time, smaller cables were built at the top to haul materials up the surface of the mountain. These are carried there by hand, and then more and more robust stuff is installed to handle the bigger and bigger stuff

So to start, a hiking team arrives with rope and installs a pulley system. They use that to pull up cables and infrastructure to pull up even heavier loads. If needed, they’ll do that 2-3 times until the final equipment is installed.

They build out the basic lifts first, and then use that to haul up the construction materials to build out the rest of the infrastructure.

Today, a lot of that is replaced with heavy machinery that can mitigate or eliminate the earlier stages. But “man powered” starts are still a super common means of early construction staging.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Its sort of the conundrum of seeing those super tall cranes they use to build skyscrapers. How do they build those tall cranes? From what I’ve heard they build them as they go, and as the crane needs to get taller they jack it up and add on to it at the bottom.

Sorta like OP’s post. Without cable cars how did they port the materials up there to build the cable cars?

Anonymous 0 Comments

They first build a short one and use it to bring up the materials for a slightly longer one. Once the slightly longer one is built, they dismantle the shorter one and use the longer one to bring up the materials for the next, even more slightly longer one. So on and so forth. Its actually quite brilliant.