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).

---

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 descending car pays for the ascending one.** Nothing lifts the weight of a car; gravity does, and the

machinery only makes up the imbalance.

Early funiculars removed the engine entirely by making the imbalance out of water:

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** |

[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.

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.

---

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.

- [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

**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.