entry Oct 2008
"Where the little Cable-Cars climb halfway off the drawing boards..."
Pictured (right) is one
of the four cable-cars in the city of Naples; this is the
car on the Montesanto line as it pulls into the station on
the street named Corso Vittorio Emanuele. It comes up from
the main station in the city, makes this stop and then
finishes at the top station on the Vomero hill at about
600 feet. The station in the picture is about one-third of
the way up; at the half-way point, the single track will
split into a double track to allow the car coming down at
the same time (the cars are on the same cable) to pass the
one going up. When the down-car then stops at this
station, the car on the way up stops at a "blank
station"—an empty spot in the tunnel—and waits. Then, they
both start again and finish the run at the bottom and top
stations, respectively. The other cable cars in Naples
don't have any "blanks" along the way; there really are
stations at those points.
The
simplest cable-car would be one with only a top and bottom
station with a double-track by-pass at the halfway point.
The old, famous cable-car of funiculì-funiculà
fame on Vesuvius (not one of the four mentioned above) was
like that. The others have more stations: The Chiaia line
has four (including top and bottom, as does the Central
line; the Mergellina line has five. All of the stations
are on streets, or at least close enough so you can get
out to the street via some stairs. Only the Montesanto
line has a "missing" station.
The plan
was to turn the blank spot on the Montesanto line into a
real station (since the car has to stop there anyway).
There is no real street at that spot that would be served
by a new station, but it would make it easier to reach the
great tourist attraction of the Sant'
Elmo fortress and adjacent San Martino museum. That
is, the way it works now is that you ride the cable-car to
the top, get off and then walk about 10-minutes over to
the Vomero look-out, overlooking the city and directly in
front of both the fortress and the museum.
But, what
if...heh-heh...you put a station at that blank spot, a
station that was essentially at the bottom of an elevator
shaft and then ran the elevator up to a spot on the street
in front of the museum and the fortress. It would mean
tunneling over from the track to a spot directly beneath
that point and then running the shaft up about 200 feet to
the new station. It would look something like this:
Ticket booth,
turnstiles, a spectacular view of Vesuvius, and stairs
leading down to the former "blank" station. There are
four elevators not shown here. I think you might want
to walk down and enjoy the view. Maybe on the way up
from the cable-car station—named "Sant'Elmo"—you might
want to catch a lift. A plan to do all this was
approved in 2001. The whole deal was going to cost
five million euros and be finished in 2005. Uh, the
cable car is late. I mean really late. The new station and
interior shots shown above are artists' CGI
renditions. (There is, however, some talk of using
real masonry and steel if this thing ever gets off the
ground!) Work hasn't started yet.
There is a map of all four cable-cars in Naples
here.
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