860 



Popular Science Monthly 



and of the Victoria Park Commission of 

 Niagara Falls, they had to obtain 

 permission from Albany, since the bed 

 of the river is owned by New York 

 State, and from Washington, since the 

 water is owned by the Federal Govern- 

 ment. 



But the restrictions did not stop here. 

 The engineers were cautioned against 

 erecting a cableway which would cross 

 the tracks of the Niagara Belt Line 

 Railway, and they wer^ further warned 

 against dam- 

 ag i n g the 

 cliffs on either 

 side of the 

 Wh i rl pool. 

 To increase 

 their difficul- 

 ties they were 

 forbidden to 

 build any 

 towers or 

 s t r u c tu res 

 which would 

 rise above the 

 level of the 

 tracks of the 

 railway run- 

 ning along 

 the cliff. 



This first 

 cableway o f 

 its kind in 



Heavy rock excavation at Thompson's Point. 

 Whirlpool appears below 



America was built at a total cost of 

 sixty thousand dollars, exclusive of 

 engineering expenses and exclusive also 

 of the car and loading platforms, both 

 of which were built in Spain. With 

 past experience to guide them, the 

 promoters have no doubt a duplicate 

 installation could be built for forty-five 

 thousand dollars. 



The Torres system is simple in the ex- 

 treme. It consits merely of six par- 

 allel carrying or track cables which 

 hold the passenger car, each cable be- 

 ing securely attached to a fixed anchor- 

 age at one end of the line and to a coun- 

 terweight system at the other. The 

 cables are fastened at Colt's Point to a 

 seven hundred and forty-one ton con- 

 crete block, and at Thompson's Point 

 each is attached to a ten-ton counter- 

 weight or stretcher after passing over a 

 grooved sheave. These counterweights 

 move freely up and down in steel guides, 



as the load is diminished or increased. 

 Thus, the tension upon the cables is not 

 increased by the weight of the car, 

 although the deflection of the cables is, 

 of course. 



In other words, a sudden load thrown 

 upon the cables causes the counter- 

 weights to rise and the cables to sag. 

 The greater the load on the cables the 

 greater will be the sag. But the tension 

 will not be increased ; it always will be 

 ten tons to the cable. Thus, the tension 



in the track 

 cables d e- 

 pends solely 

 upon the 

 counter- 

 weights and 

 not at all up- 

 on the weight 

 of passengers 

 borne by the 

 car. 



Suppose a 



Cable Should 



Snap ? 



For this 

 reason the 

 suddenbneak- 

 ing of any one 

 track cable 

 would not be 

 serious, as the 

 other cables would support all the 

 weight of the car without any increase 

 in their tension. Should a cable break, 

 the car filled with passengers would fall 

 suddenly and then bob up and down 

 until it assumed a new position of 

 equilibrium. The breaking of two 

 cables at the same time is considered 

 impossible by the engineers. 



The simplicity and safety of the Torres 

 system lie in the fact that each cable is 

 put into fixed tension from the start of 

 operations, that this tension never va- 

 ries, that the resistance of the cable can 

 be verified at any time by increasing the 

 load on the counterweights, that if 

 any cable or fastening is faulty it will 

 probably break when heavily weighted 

 for trial or inspection trips, and that 

 if a cable does break practically no extra 

 strain is put upon the other cables. 



The passenger car is propelled by a 

 traction cable fastened to a ten-ton 



The 



