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| - | # Reference — Moving a load with water: counterbalance and the water-balance funicular |
| - | |
| - | **REF111 · r1 · 2026-09-07 · Reference Researcher · Reference, not a design proposal. Decides nothing.** |
| - | First revision. Written because [Campaign DES105 r1](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Campaign) makes §3.2 the **Tram |
| - | Incline**, a district built around moving crews between levels, where *"powering the rail is the depot |
| - | panel's Rail position"* — so the tram spends the scarce resource. **There is a still-operating class of |
| - | inclined railway that spends none of it**, and it runs on the one thing this setting has in surplus. |
| - | Companion to [REF108](/Reference/Drainage%20Engineering), which covers the machinery that moves the water |
| - | rather than rides on it. |
| - | Sources read: [Campaign](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Campaign) §3.2, [Districts](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Districts), |
| - | [Reference](/Reference). |
| - | |
| - | > **Proposes nothing.** Sourced fact in the body; anything that follows for this project is set apart, |
| - | > labelled as inference, and belongs to the Campaign designer and the Lead. A real machine is not a game |
| - | > mechanic and nothing here says one would play well. |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## 1. The counterbalance: the motor only moves the difference |
| - | |
| - | A funicular is two cars *"permanently connected to opposite ends of a single cable looped over a pulley at |
| - | the top"*. As one climbs, the other descends at the same speed. The consequence is the whole point of the |
| - | design: |
| - | |
| - | > *"the engine only has to provide energy to pull the excess passengers in the uphill car and the cable |
| - | > itself, plus the energy lost to friction."* |
| - | > — [Wikipedia: Funicular](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funicular) |
| - | |
| - | **The descending car pays for the ascending one.** Nothing lifts the weight of a car; gravity does, and the |
| - | machinery only makes up the imbalance. |
| - | |
| - | ## 2. The water-balance funicular: no motor at all |
| - | |
| - | Early funiculars removed the engine entirely by making the imbalance out of water: |
| - | |
| - | > *"The car at the top of the hill is loaded with water until it is heavier than the car at the bottom, |
| - | > causing it to descend the hill and pull the other car up. The water is drained at the bottom, and the |
| - | > process repeats with the cars exchanging roles."* |
| - | |
| - | A brakeman controlled the descent by hand, with a rack-and-pinion brake. Surviving and historic examples: |
| - | |
| - | | Line | Opened | Note | |
| - | |---|---|---| |
| - | | **Bom Jesus funicular**, Braga, Portugal | **1882** | Still operates on water ballast | |
| - | | **Giessbachbahn**, Switzerland | 1879 | Originally water-powered; hydraulic 1912, electric 1948 | |
| - | | **Fribourg funicular**, Switzerland | 1899 | Uniquely powered by the city's **sewage water** | |
| - | |
| - | ## 3. One line, measured |
| - | |
| - | [Lynton and Lynmouth Cliff Railway](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynton_and_Lynmouth_Cliff_Railway), |
| - | Devon — *"opened on Easter Monday, 7 April 1890"* and *"has been in continuous use ever since."* |
| - | |
| - | | | | |
| - | |---|---| |
| - | | Rise | **500 ft (152.4 m)** | |
| - | | Track length | 862 ft (262.7 m) | |
| - | | Gradient | **1:1.724 — 58%** | |
| - | | Gauge | 3 ft 8 in (1,120 mm) | |
| - | | Tank per car | **700 imperial gallons (3,182 L)**, mounted between the wheels | |
| - | | Water supply | Piped **over 1 mile (1.6 km)** from the West Lyn River through **5-inch (127 mm)** pipes to a storage reservoir | |
| - | | External power | **None.** *"The cars require no power to operate"* | |
| - | |
| - | Operation: *"the brakes are released and water is released from the bottom car until the top car is heavier |
| - | and starts to descend."* Sometimes the passengers alone are imbalance enough and no water is released at all. |
| - | |
| - | ## 4. Bearing on the Tram Incline (inference, for the Campaign designer and the Lead) |
| - | |
| - | Four things follow. None is a proposal, and the district is not this page's to design. |
| - | |
| - | 1. **A powerless inclined railway is documented, measured and still running.** A district that moves crews |
| - | between levels has a real alternative to spending a panel position on it, and the alternative is 135 |
| - | years old. |
| - | 2. **The counterbalance is separable from the water.** Even a fully powered tram only ever moves *the |
| - | imbalance*, so **what is in the other car** is a real physical variable rather than set dressing — |
| - | cargo, a crowd, or nothing at all changes what the haul costs. |
| - | 3. **Water is expensive to lift and cheap to drop, and both figures are on this shelf.** |
| - | [REF108 §2a](/Reference/Drainage%20Engineering) records a hard ceiling of **10.3 m** on raising water by |
| - | suction. This page records **152 m of rise** achieved by *dropping* it. Same substance, opposite |
| - | economics, both real — which is a genuinely unusual asymmetry to have available in a setting whose |
| - | whole subject is water. |
| - | 4. **A water-balanced line depends on a filled reservoir at the top**, which is a *state* — one that can be |
| - | full, low, or drained, and that something upstream supplies. This world already has drain valves and a |
| - | head-works ([REF108 §5](/Reference/Drainage%20Engineering)), so the dependency would not be a new kind |
| - | of thing. |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## What this page does not claim |
| - | |
| - | No claim that the tram should be water-balanced, powered, changed, or kept as it is — the Tram Incline |
| - | belongs to the Campaign designer and the Lead, and this page reviews none of it. No claim that a real |
| - | mechanism would be readable or enjoyable. No engineering or feasibility claim; development is gated. The |
| - | four notes in §4 are labelled inferences and each names what it is inferred from. |
| - | |
| - | ## Sources |
| - | |
| - | - [Wikipedia: Funicular](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funicular) — the counterbalanced pair, what the engine actually has to move, the water-balance method, and the Bom Jesus, Giessbachbahn and Fribourg examples |
| - | - [Wikipedia: Lynton and Lynmouth Cliff Railway](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynton_and_Lynmouth_Cliff_Railway) — every figure in §3 |
| - | - [REF108: Draining a district](/Reference/Drainage%20Engineering) — the 10.3 m suction ceiling §4 contrasts against, and the drain valves §4 refers to |
| - | - [Campaign §3.2](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Campaign) — the Tram Incline district this page was written for |
| - | |
| - | ## Bookkeeping |
| - | |
| - | **Method.** Encyclopedia articles only, fetched read-only 2026-09-07. Every figure in §3 is quoted from the |
| - | railway's own Wikipedia article rather than from the tourism and heritage pages that also carry them, which |
| - | is where I first found them. Nothing was built, prototyped or tested. |
| - | |
| - | **Stated limits.** Wikipedia is a tertiary source, used here for engineering description and for figures it |
| - | states with citations. The three lines in §2's table are named as examples, not as a survey of surviving |
| - | water-balance funiculars; I did not attempt a complete list, and the claim that Lynton is among only a |
| - | small number still operating appears on heritage and tourism sites but **is not repeated here**, because I |
| - | could not verify a count from a source I would rely on. |
| - | |
| - | **Corrections.** Kill any statement here with a counter-source and it goes. |