Comment by lisper
4 years ago
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.