Well, dammit, it was a business trip and I don’t mind sharing it with you because it was by far the nicest I have ever been on. Along with the editors of SAM’s Austrian, French and Italian counterparts, I was invited to see the world’s largest funicular. It wasn’t my fault that it happens to be in Naples.
The cars had been designed and built by our host, CWA Constructions, of Switzerland. Just across the bay, on beautiful Capri, was another of their new, state-of-the-art funiculars. Again, my fault?
No! Funiculi, funicula!
The link, of course, to SAM is that the cabin technology is much the same as that used by CWA in the gondolas and aerial tramways it provides to ski resorts worldwide. (Most recently the new gondola at Stowe and one currently under construction at Telluride.)
Before leaving for sunny Italy, our group gathered at the CWA factory in Olten — a spiffy, neat-as-a-pin plant, where we saw, among other things, their new 80-passenger Rotair cabin which will “add a further dimension to the normally linear ropeway experience” (indeed!) by completing a complete rotation en route to the top.
Would that people could shed weight the way CWA engineers have learned to shed it from cabin construction. The secret is aluminum construction that has great torsional strength, thanks to design (self-supporting aluminum members) and construction techniques (aluminum is not bent, but extruded … riveted construction, the only weld in a cabin being cosmetic). The weight control is what has made possible both the 450-passenger funicular installation we saw in Naples, as well as the four humongous 165-passenger tramway cabins ordered up by two Japanese ski resorts. Yes, they are world’s largest, too.
Back to the trip. A gorgeous minibus drive through Switzerland’s lake region to the Milan airport was next, for which our high-tach driver was Dieter Frech, younger brother of CWA’s GM, Heinz. Dieter seems to have a Mario Andretti gleam in his eyes — and, as far as I can see, the skills also.
The Milan-Naples leg was by plane. Then that evening we toured the funicular, motor room and all, looking slightly implausible to Neapolitano straphangers, dressed as we were for the dinner that was to follow.
The three-car trains carry passengers from the harbor-level center of town about a mile up a 12.5 percent grade to the communities above. The CWA units replaced the original, installed in 1928, and retired in accordance with Italian law.
Part of what their Italian customers wanted was for the new installation to combine the modern capabilities of capacity, reliability and safety, with a comfortable feel of the old facility that Neapolitans were familiar with. So, while there is nothing flashy about the cars, the technical details that went into the system’s multiple redundancy, emergency back-up power, anti-vandalism measures and the like held us in awe.
As did the dinner that followed in a small restaurant around the corner from the opera, where, far into the night, this improbable collection of multi-national trade magazine editors, Neapolitan public transportation officials and Swiss manufacturing executives ate, drank and sang their way through fantastic regional specialties.
CWA’s fun-loving Rene Borner borrowed a guitar and entertained with western Americana and some driving Presley numbers, while an unidentified SAM editor was emboldened to lead the group in a rowdy French drinking song.
The next day it was back to work — in Capri. Another CWA funicular, more great eating, the amazing Blue Grotto, the spectacular beauty of the island.
You bet it was business. Let’s see, the Capri installation has a daily capacity of 20,000, a maximum steigung of 38.62 percent, a geschwindigkeit of 8 m/sec. and a streckenlänge of 662.5 m.
Besides that, it’s red, runs quietly and passengers always seem to be smiling.
This issue is the last to carry John Fry’s “Ski Industry Focus” —what came to be known as “the blue pages.” Now that he is responsible for editing Ski Business as well as Snow Country, John understandably feels a slight conflict of interest.
I know SAM readers will miss his forthright, penetrating insights, as well as the wit and wisdom he brought to their delivery.
