Page 80 - Bulletin 17 2013

77

across town and bay would provide a spectacular backdrop to the refreshment and

recreational facilities that it was anticipated would follow the innovation.

Cableways and Railways to Reservoirs

Concurrently, the necessity of augmenting municipal water supplies had focused attention on
the catchments on top of Table Mountain. In 1891 Cape Town commenced construction of

the Woodhead Reservoir. At first all materials were carried by porters using the old path up

Kasteelspoort, Camps Bay. Then in 1893 a cableway was constructed up the Poort. It rose a
vertical height of nearly 700 m across 14 spans, and the horizontal line of cableway was

1,600 m. The car or cage was an open skip that could carry a maximum load of 600 kg, or a

couple of crouching passengers. (Figs. 2.2 – 2.7.) A technical and complimentary description
of it was given in a leading trade journal:

The British and South African Export Gazette, 1 June 1894.

Table Mountain Wire Ropeway

The wire ropeway now in use for carrying materials for the new Corporation reservoir
on Table Mountain deserves the attention of South Africans as a new development towards
that very important Colonial desideratum, economy of transport. It is situated at a high level
on a spur of the famous mountain, and represents a remarkable achievement in aerial
tramway building. It was constructed to carry loads of 12 cwt., and has a total rise of about
2,200 ft. in its length of 5,280 ft.
The system employed is that known as the single fixed wire system, introduced by
Mr. W. H. Carrington, M.I.C.E., in conjunction with Messrs. Bullivant and Co. It was first
adopted in the construction of a tramway in Hong Kong for the carriage of workmen from a
large sugar factory situated near that Colony, to a sanatorium placed on a mountain ridge
some height above the malarial sea level. The system involves the use of one carrier only,
which runs suspended from the fixed rope, and is drawn by steam or other power between the
two ends of the line. In the Capetown ropeway, an illustration of which is herewith given,
steam is used as motive power. The chief features of this line are its great incline and the two
long spans, respectively 1,380 ft. and 1,470 ft., which occur near the upper terminal. The
support which separates the two is placed on a peak of the rock just large enough to carry it.
The tramway will transport 100 tons of material per day, and its power could be easily
increased by the addition of a double rope, thus making the line similar to that now at work in
Gibraltar. We do not see why the successful working of the line at Capetown should not lead
to its extension for the transport of passengers about the rocky heights surrounding the city.
The Hong Kong tramway, of precisely similar construction, has been safely at work for about
three years, carrying about 40 passengers to and fro daily.
The erection of the Table Mountain tramway was in the hands of Mr. Thomas
Stewart, Engineer of the Capetown Corporation, to whom the credit of originating the idea of