Comment by throwawaaarrgh
4 years ago
why didn't he just use a cable to pull it? no need for gears, no traction issues, the motor etc can stay stationary. trains have their own power because you can't stretch a cable across the country, but this is so tiny it'd be trivial.
Others have mentioned both of these things, but not together so...
1. The track is curved.
2. One of the design goals was to disrupt the surroundings as little as possible.
This second point is really important, and reveals the utter brilliance of this design. He uses the existing driveway as a second rail, but only for part of the travel. Once the train leaves the driveway there is an actual second rail. I have never seen this before. It is sheer genius IMHO.
Couldn't he just route the cable via a pulley (or series of pulleys) to navigate the curves? Admittedly would fall foul of requirement #2.
> Couldn't he just route the cable via a pulley (or series of pulleys) to navigate the curves?
Yes, that is possible. But...
> Admittedly would fall foul of requirement #2.
You got it.
There are all kinds of other problems as well. The train will make a very sharp turn every time it hits a pulley. It's hard to attach something to a cable in such a way that it can reliably go over a pulley. Yada yada yada.
Yeah, early precursors to railroads (cable railways used for mines) did just this :-D , and there were even passenger railways that used cable haulage as the form of motive power!
Here's a really cool example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_and_Blackwall_Railway#C...
And there still are in San Francisco.
And they can go around corners: http://www.cablecarmuseum.org/archive/Anat/Anat.html
It has to go around a corner, that I think explains why he didn't just use a cable.
It's a lot harder to go around a corner without some kind of guidance for the wheels.
The rails don't go in a straight line.
Neither do cable cars?
Look at all the complexity needed to get a cable car to follow curves. Top comment was implying that using a cable would eliminate the issues with gears or traction. That’s not true.
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A cable isn't as fun as a fully-functional train.
Since it seems like the main concern is moving the bins without messing up the yard, if it were me I'd do the rail and platforms for the trash cans that he did and then just push or pull the train manually. If I wanted to get fancy I'd angle the rail track down slightly so that when bins are full they are easier to move, but that runs the risk of interfering with the landscaping.