Swansea Constitution Hill Incline Railway
Junction of Hanover Street and Constitution Hill, the site of the Cable Tramway
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| Operation | |
|---|---|
| Locale | Swansea |
| Open | 27 August 1898 |
| Close | 5 October 1901 |
| Status | Closed |
| Infrastructure | |
| Track gauge | 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) |
| Propulsion system(s) | Cable |
| Statistics | |
| Route length | 0.175 miles (0.282 km) |
The Swansea Constitution Hill Incline Tramway operated a cable funicular tramway service on Constitution Hill in Swansea between 1898 and 1901.
The Swansea Constitution Hill Incline Tramway Company developed this tramway with consulting engineer George Croydon Marks, 1st Baron Marks. It was built by George Webb and Company. It operated along Constitution Hill between the lower terminus at St. George Street which is now Hannover Street and the upper terminus at Terrace Road. There was an average gradient of 1 in 5 with a maximum of 1 in 3.5. The total elevation was 185 feet (56 m).
Two counterbalanced cars built by the Brush Electrical Engineering Company were fixed to the steel cable, guided by pulleys in a conduit. At the top of the hill the winding house contained two Tangye gas engines.
The line was first inspected by the Board of Trade, represented by Lieutenant-Colonel H A Yorke, on 26 April 1897, with a view to starting service in August of the same year. It failed the inspection on a number of safety issues:
"...any ignorant or mischievous person or child could push the switches over into the wrong position in the face on an approaching car, and might then cause an accident."
Under the terms of the building contract the company was allowed to claim from the building contractors the cost of any improvements or rectifications if the line was found to be unsatisfactory; this they did. It is unclear what changes may have taken place, particularly to the track layout, as while the Board of Trade raised serious issues of the single-track layout there is no record of it having been altered to interlaced track. However, some kind of new brake referred to as a "Scotch brake" was fitted to the cars.
It finally opened for service on 27 August 1898 but was closed on the same day when a problem was discovered in the clutch mechanism. It reopened around 1 September, and over the next 14 months averaged only around 500 passengers a day (200,000 in total). At least five people were needed to run the service at any time - a driver and guard on each car, and the engineer controlling the winding mechanism - and with a 1d fare, the passenger receipts had little prospect of ever covering even the wage costs.
The tramway company was closely linked to a housing development at the top of the hill in Mount Pleasant, and decided to keep running the line until all the houses were sold. On 3 October 1901 the following statement appeared in the Evening Express:
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