Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Unusual modes of transport you have used.

Cable Car
I'm trying to remember if I've ever been in a cable car. My memory is telling me I have, but I can't think where and I've a suspicion I may be confusing watching Moonraker and Where Eagles Dare too many times with real life... :hmm:
 
On the same 2018 trip to Germany we also used the magnificent St. Pauli Elbtunnel that links central Hamburg with the docks and shipyards on the southern side of the Elbe. We didn't use the car lift, just the pedestrian one and walked under the river and got a ferry back. I think it counts asa mode of transport?

View attachment 451149

View attachment 451150

Something scary happens in that tunnel in the Odessa file. I looked it up when I rewatched the film recently.

The Greenwich and Woolwich foot tunnels are the creepy subterranean film locations where I have loitered.

In addition: hovercraft, 🐘, 🐫, paternoster lift, funicular, venetian gondola, the big wheel in Vienna, cable cars, horse trams, one of the last Bradford trolleybuses, a sand yacht, Ruislip Lido railway, Volks electric train in Brighton, Notting Hill Carnival float, Blackpool balloon tram, and on a coach with a police escort through Budapest to witness the formal departure of the Red Army at the end of the Cold War.

I have also paid £28 to travel from Acton Town to Uxbridge and back on the preserved 1938 stock tube train, despite having travelled on them frequently in my childhood. Other London Transport adventures include taking the Tube to Heathrow on its opening day and being on the third or fourth Westbound Elizabeth Line train from Custom House
 
I'm trying to remember if I've ever been in a cable car. My memory is telling me I have, but I can't think where and I've a suspicion I may be confusing watching Moonraker and Where Eagles Dare too many times with real life... :hmm:

The one I went on was when I was on holiday either in Slovenia or in the vicinity of Lake Garda in Italy - I can't recall which though, both regions have quite astounding cable cars. I might have done one in each of those :D

I'm terrified of heights if I feel exposed, but I am alright if I am enclosed in something (plane cabin, cable car carriage etc.)
 
in answer to the original question -

funiculars - cliff lifts at hastings.

think i used whatever the people mover things were at gatwick airport, and similar at birmingham airport in the late 80s / early 90s. can't remember much about either.

i can't remember if i travelled on the m-bahn (maglev) in (west) berlin when i was there in 1990 - it was in intermittent service then. (it only ran officially for a few months in 1991, as it was built on a bit of underground line that had been severed by the wall and they wanted to rebuild the line. i really must find and digitise my photos)

i have been in a bus crossing on the woolwich ferry (i'm fairly sure there has never been a public bus service that uses it, this was a retired / preserved bus going to an event somewhere north of the river.)

i regard the woolwich and greenwich foot tunnels as not unusual, but have used both, and with the old lifts.

likewise i remember red painted underground trains (1938 tube trains and the bigger equivalent on the district line) as being normal (the former were in service until 1988, the latter until 1981.)

have only travelled on trolleybuses in the UK in museums, but have travelled on (Skoda) trolleybuses in Potsdam.

space hopper (although only within the confines of parents' house and garden)

i remember places having lifts like this with lift attendants (none of this fancy modern stuff like pushing the button for the floor you want, so they needed a lift attendant to drive them) - chiesmans department store (later army + navy - where the police station is now) in lewisham had them.
 
Did anyone else who has experienced a paternoster take it to the top and beyond to see what would happen, half-thinking it might flip over?
 
Did anyone else who has experienced a paternoster take it to the top and beyond to see what would happen, half-thinking it might flip over?

Sadly not, I was about 7or 8 and with my dad who might not have been up for such shenanigans.

It was probably in Central London. I'm almost certainly an airline or tour operator. I don't know how common they were or if there is a list of former locations, but would like to be able to find where it might have been.
 
Camel
Cable car*
Felucca on the Nile
Back of a flatbed lorry
Dune buggy
Light aircraft
Funicular

*I went on the one between Barceloneta and Montjuif in Barcelona. It was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life due to accessing it via a lift that was in a pylon-like structure, with everything visible. The cable car door was held shut by a piece of what looked like knicker elastic. The Spanish guys in the car laughed at me and my friend clinging to each other in terror. Not that long afterwards, there was a really nasty accident where the car went thwump into the sea, killing several people, so our fears were justified. :eek: and :confused:
 
san francisco trolley cars

in salzburg i went to the mine and you go from level to level by sliding down highly polished wooden banisters

i have operated DC elevators and still ride in one almost daily
 
Funicular
Monorail
Ropeway
Ski lift
Camel
Rickshaw
Horse and cart
Tractor
Inspection train
Milk float
Steam powered omnibus
Was wracking my brains over whether I've ever travelled on a milk float. One of my neighbours had one that he'd refurbished but I can't for the life of me actually remember travelling on it.
 
The Aiguille du Midi, Chamonix and the Penkenbahn, Mayerhofen - both can sway alarmingly in high winds.

I got stuck on the Penkenbahn, 20m from the bottom for 25 minutes with a load of shrieking, screaming French teens. One of them threw up 10 minutes in.

Aguille-du-Midi-e1622824074259.jpg

17112557.jpg
 
The Aiguille du Midi, Chamonix and the Penkenbahn, Mayerhofen - both can sway alarmingly in high winds.

I got stuck on the Penkenbahn, 20m from the bottom for 25 minutes with a load of shrieking, screaming French teens. One of them threw up 10 minutes in.

View attachment 451218

View attachment 451219

I was thinking I must have been on a cable car when skiing but can only remember drag lifts and chair lifts.

I've been on the cable cars in Tromso and Gibraltar but they only get a few meters off the ground, so not really puking territory but the Gib one did have a monkey in it.

1731754287660.jpeg
 
I think we might finally have cracked the Urban grail of differentiation of working and middle class.

It comes down to if one defines a cable car or ski lift as an unusual mode of transport.

I’ve been on both by the way…
 
drag lifts and chair lifts.
They can have their moments tbf. You've probably been left swaying as some berk has fallen off or not got on - clearly the time for the hip flask and the shot pipe.

Though the last might be responsible for my only ever helicopter trip which was shit as I was lying down in the back groaning.


Screenshot 2024-11-16 at 10.47.23.png
 
I think we might finally have cracked the Urban grail of differentiation of working and middle class.

It comes down to if one defines a cable car or ski lift as an unusual mode of transport.

I’ve been on both by the way…
I have been on both but not for the purposes of winter sports, hiking in the summer
 
The torpoint one is also a chain one, but i gathered from my Google search that they are called cable ferries anyway. There's also one somewhere else in Devon which i've driven a car on to but can't quite remember where.
The ones going across the Dart to Dartmouth I reckon
 
Back
Top Bottom