[Trev]

I've started this thread here because I didn't want to get the quiz thread off topic.

I'm interested in how this subway worked when it was operated by cable. Syd has explained a bit in the quiz thread already (for which I'm grateful), but I still have a few more questions.

If the trains were operated by a clutch thingy onto a continuously moving cable, wouldn't that have made the acceleration from stopping to going a bit on the jerky side? Y'know, from not moving to suddenly moving at the speed of the cable? And it must have taken somne skill on the part of the drivers to know when to disengage the clutch and let the trains coast to a halt at a station.

This fascinates me, to be quite honest, but I'm not mechanically minded at all, and I just cannot work out for myself how it might have worked. I have a photograph in a book published by the NRM of the drum which powered the cable, and I have a vague memory of reading (or seeing on a TV programme) that some of the cable equipment had been preserved.