Fw: Elevador da Glória

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From: owen brison
Sent: Thursday, September 4, 2025 10:00 am
Subject: Elevador da Glória

  

Lisbon saw a very bad accident on Wednesday evening. There was a runaway at the Elevador da Glória with 15 fatalities and 18 people injured, 5 of the latter being serious / critical. 

 

The Elevador has two cars, one at each end of a cable that passes over a free-running pulley at the top: in theory, the cars balance each other when empty. The cable runs in a slot in the ground. Each car sits on a modification of a Brill 21E-type truck and has two traction motors with a tram-type controller at each end. There are air brakes. The cars are wired in series with each other, via pantographs and four overhead contact wires, so that current arrives at the motors only when both cars have a controller that has taken power.

 

Witnesses interviewed on TV state that the car at the lower end seems to have started up the hill but suddenly fell back a short way and stopped at the end of its rails; it seems outwardly undamaged. The car at the top came down the hill out of control, derailed at a curve near the lower end and hit a nearby building: the wooden bodywork more or less collapsed. The driver did not survive. 

 

Owen.