COMMENTS TO MY PAGE "ART POSTCARDS WITH A RAILWAY MOTIVE"

Funicolare vesuviana

The idea for a funicular railway on Mount Vesuvius was conceived during the late 19th century. The company Compagnia del Vesuvio was established to manage the project and the funicular was completed and inaugurated in 1880. The system was powered by steam engines and featured a double track with two cars that counterbalanced each other as one ascended and the other descended. A new light railway, La ferrovia Pugliano-Vesuvio, partly rack-and-pinion, built in 1903, helped double the number of tourists transported to the crater. This pushed the company to demolish the old systems and build a new, more functional funicular, with electric motors instead of the old and expensive steam engines, a single track with doubling halfway (instead of a monorail); in addition, new, more capacious carriages entered service. The rebuilt line entered into operation in 1904. But the flourishing of technology at the beginning of the century was overshadowed by a terrible eruption in 1906. The lower and upper stations, the equipment, the machinery, the two carriages of the funicular were destroyed; everything was buried under a layer of ash 20-30 m high. In a short time the damage to the electric railway was repaired, but a  landslide that occurred in 1911 at the upper station caused a new interruption of the funicular, which reopened in 1912. The system remained in operation until 1944, when Vesuvius awoke. The funicular suffered irreparable damage and was never rebuilt. In 1953 the funicular was replaced by a chairlift. The system operated regularly, transporting up to a thousand people a day to the top of Vesuvius. Over time, the chairlift became unsuitable for transporting tourists, because it was often unusable due to the wind, which made the seats swing dangerously, and because it was unable to simultaneously transport the ever-increasing number of groups. In 1984 the chairlift was stopped forever.

January 5th 2025

 

 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.