Page 82 - Bulletin 17 2013

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sole support of the whole affair. To us uninitiated it appears as if only a slight jerk would be
required to lift one or both of those little revolving discs of steel off the cable, and then it
would be a case of “all’s lost, to prayers.” Fortunately the Cape doesn’t deal in earthquakes –
not as a staple, anyway – and so nothing goes wrong, and the red flag doesn’t come into
requisition. Our spirits rise with the mountain air and we enjoy to the full the grand panorama
now spread out beneath us. Still going up, fairly perpendicular now, we approach the edge of
the precipice on which stands the first mountain standard. With an extra mighty effort, it
appears to us, the cage slowly mounts up and passes over the standard. We breathe a little
more comfortably now. Ten feet between the cage and terra firma seems quite a relief after
the last few minutes’ experience, though so far as that goes a fall even now as we coast along,
just clearing the abutting spurs, would be little less than fatal. Without stopping we enter a
south-east cloud and the air becomes at once bitterly cold, something like the east wind of an
English spring. Then the mist disperses and we notice we are crossing the Poort diagonally
and making for the final halting place far above our heads, partially enveloped in the fog. A
minute more and with something of a jerk the cage surmounts the last angle and pulls up
directly afterwards at the end of a short length of horizontal cable.
We are on top, 2,000 feet above the sea, and the journey has occupied eight minutes.
My friend and I are awfully cold, numbed with the damp cold of the South-easter. We restore
our circulation by walking rapidly along the half-mile of light railway which carries the mule
trucks of cement to the works.

The success of this system led The Cape Argus in 1894 to suggest that it might provide the

solution to the Table Mountain railway question. It pointed out that such systems were now
being constructed in many parts of the world, including one at Brighton, UK.

During the later construction of the Hely-Hutchinson Reservoir the cableway was used again.

It was dismantled in 1904, but several of the support posts can still be seen in Kasteelspoort.

In 1900 Wynberg Municipality began construction of the Victoria, and later the Alexandra

and de Villiers Reservoirs, in the headwaters of the Disa River on Table Mountain. Initially
an aerial cableway was used but it was not fully satisfactory. When the third reservoir was

constructed a trolley track was laid on sleepers upslope above Kirstenbosch. Two trolleys
operated on a ‘jig-back’ system ie. one up and one down at the same time. Initially, power

was supplied by two horses rotating a sheave at the upper end. This proved inefficient and a

steam engine replaced the horse power. The trolley track was dismantled in 1905. (Fig. 2.8.)