Flat rope on incline tramways · AditNow Community

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Cornish Pixie
50.2% (Neutral)
Newbie Topic Starter

13 years ago

Does anyone know if wire flat rope was used on incline tramways? I am exploring a couple dating from the mid- to late-1850s and have found a sheave wheel (48cms) in diameter and a lot of flat rope (9 cms) in width.

Den heb davaz a gollaz i dir

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derrickman
50.2% (Neutral)
Newbie

13 years ago

http://www.penmorfa.com/Slate/Inclines.htm show round ropes being the norm there.

One thing about flat rope is that it isn't suitable for applications involving more than one plane of operation, such as sheave wheels to change direction or tensioner wheels. This doesn't matter in a shaft because shaft ropes are tensioned by their own weight and suspended load.

''the stopes soared beyond the range of our caplamps' - David Bick...... How times change .... oh, I don't know, I've still got a lamp like that.

grahami
50.2% (Neutral)
Newbie

13 years ago

Penrhyn Quarry initially used flat chains in its vertical water balances, then flat wire ropes. The Inclines however used round ropes (as far as I know) with the exception of the incline between the quarry and the end of the Penrhyn Railway, which used a chain. I don't know the nature of the chain.

Cheers

Grahami

The map is the territory - especially in chain scale.

derrickman
50.2% (Neutral)
Newbie

13 years ago

chains were early on, recognised as very dangerous because they have many, many wear points and virtually any failure is catastrophic ( in the technical sense of "causing complete failure" ).

http://www.cmhrc.co.uk/cms/document/1863_66.pdf of the actual chain at Botallack, the only such description I know of.

Flat ropes are good for winding in a single plane, less so for winding round corners so no good for certain types of incline, for example the Middleton Top incline in Derbyshire where the winding house was offset so that wagons could pass the engine house on the same track after ascending the incline

''the stopes soared beyond the range of our caplamps' - David Bick...... How times change .... oh, I don't know, I've still got a lamp like that.