Has anyone made an incline drum?

[rsb0204]

just an odd thought I had the other day, some semi functional eye-candy relly but I think one would look cool with a mine and I haven't seen one done so... I don't see any reason why it couldent be done, granted id probably try to make a smaller one but I just wanted to see if anyone had tried it.

[monai]

Something like that has been made a lot of years ago, you can find it in the 1969 241 idea books

sergio

[ScotNick]

I can't remember seeing something like that, but if you want to try your hands on that, I just got an idea:

You could use the old 12V grey tracks and put the curves sideways to get the incline.

Hope that helps!

[DasMatze]

The flex tracks are vertically flexible too, they could be used for this.

[rsb0204]

I like the way the one in the 241 idea book came out. I did have a go at it (well in ldd anyway) and a table incline works pretty well. a real table incline for reference.

[Redimus]

The trick is to set up a motor and some string to make it work.

[zephyr1934]

Googling lego funicular turned up several, including: one at legoland, one in lego ideas, one in Eurobricks, and the most detailed one on mocpages. Meanwhile, here is the 241 idea book. The roller coaster in the same book is also inspirational.

[rsb0204]

The trick is to set up a motor and some string to make it work.

why? incline drums typicly don't use motors. loaded cars are at the top of the incline and empty cars are at the bottom. gravity does all the work.

Googling lego funicular turned up several, including: one at legoland, one in lego ideas, one in Eurobricks, and the most detailed one on mocpages. Meanwhile, here is the 241 idea book. The roller coaster in the same book is also inspirational.

wow, those are really nice. really like the eurobricks one. so I guess a " funicular " is an incline for passenger service? I wasent fimilar with the word. Edited June 6, 2014 by rsb0204

[Redimus]

Only if it's a freight incline, if it's one of those tourist ones, then it needs a motor. Also, manually adding and subtracting cargo would be labour intensive for a display piece.

[zephyr1934]

I'm not exactly sure where an "incline drum" ends and a "funicular" begins, and there are probably a few other names as well. I've seen four related devices

1) There are cable drawn passenger cars that are pulled up/down a slope, like those in my last post, I'm pretty sure those would be funiculars.

2) There are platforms designed to carry rail cars as in the post from rsb0204 on June 2nd (or I'm more familiar with lifts of a similar design but intended for carrying trolleys or trams).

3) Then there were systems where conventional rail cars were hauled up conventional rail tracks up really steep grades in a style like a funicular using cable lifts as in the post from rsb0204 on May 27th. I believe these were used on "light railways" (in the original sense, i.e., light on cost) in place of tunnels or other means to get past steep grades. The locomotives would pull the cars up to the foot of the hill and uncouple. The winch would pull it up one side, and often times gravity alone would be used to send it as far as possible down the other side (sometimes up the next hill as well). I think they were most common on logging and mining railroads. At some point I saw photographs of the locomotives being passed over one of the hills (you have to pull those up too), crazy stuff.

4) Then there is a fourth cousin that I am aware of. On some canalways, if the climb was too great, instead of installing a series of locks, they used a cable railway with carts to lift the boats out of the water to change elevation. So similar to #2 in that it is pulling vehicles intended for a different grade, but instead of rail cars it is canal boats.

There is a ton of information on funiculars on Wikipedia, and if you scroll down to "see also", it looks like #4 is an inclined plane.

[Redimus]

There were several of the 'normal rail with wagons going up and down' type in the early days of railways in the North East of England, and they were always called 'Inclines'. And yeah I think you're right that the passenger ones are 'Funicular'. But from a modelling point of view, you're probably gonna build and control them the say way regardless unless you have no wish to automate it (and again the design process for either one would probably be similar).