> the air brake and the manual brake were quickly applied by the brakeman of cab #1, but that in the current configuration, the brakes do not have sufficient capacity to stop the cabins in motion without their empty masses being mutually balanced by the connecting cable. Therefore, the existing brakes does not constitute a redundant system in case of a failure in the connecting cable.
Which is a slightly awkwardly worded way of saying, “well obviously they didn’t work because we know they were applied and look at the result“
This is only an initial report. They still have no idea why the breaks didn’t work, and for how long they haven’t been working. Could have been a recent malfunction, something that happened during redesign, or a an inherent flaw going back to the original design.
So the cable was a critical component and initial findings suggest it wasn't being verified as rigourously, thoroughly and often as it perhaps should have.
I only recently learned what a funicular was thanks to the diagnonal elevators in video games series of YouTube videos by sync-on-luna:
I'd say it was time well spent, it is an entertaining and capturing thriller and you learn a bit about a certain era of Portuguese history.
What annoyed me a bit was that it had many small period inconsistencies. Little things like modern buildings, modern cars visible in the background, the Yamaha grand that did not yet exist in 60s and so on. Where it shines are the landscape shots.
That’s why turn of the tide came as quite a shock in quality compared to the rest of the shows - Netflix actually put a relatively high budget into the show, which just allows them to dedicate so much more time to these little things.
If it was a modern bus hitting a building at that speed, most occupants would be able to walk out. Really puts into perspective how much safety improved in the past 100 years.
Likewise having all offers turned down for service, in some other cultures, they would rather shut down the funicular than keep it running without such contracts in place.
Now several people are dead.
As usual, "casa roubada, trancas às portas"
Coming from the same country as you, I totally understand. However, in this particular case the maintenance seems to have been done as it was supposed to be.
The problem seems to be that the cable broke at the anchoring point underneath the cabin, already underground. This is hidden from view during a normal daily inspection, where someone goes underground and checks the whole cable during a round trip of the cabin. They check the free cable going through pulleys and a flywheel, but they can't see inside the attachment point where the cable meets the cabin. This is only done in more thorough inspections, which do not happen daily.
Now, why it broke exactly at that point is probably related to how it was installed and not so much poor quality of the cable itself. Although some manufacturing issue could also be related.
We will have to wait and see, but like you said, several innocent people are dead. Hopefully in this case it wasn't down to our culture of "it's good enough, let's move on", which indeed, unfortunately, is part of our history. The least we can do now is find the real causes and make it safer in the future.
