The SMILE Program @ OSU

As our team member Alex had said last week research is an important part of the engineering process. We wanted to help you out with this process.  Cable cars can be seen in a variety of shapes and sizes but also in plenty of places around the world.  We wanted to show you an example of some of the varieties of cable cars to help inspire you.

• San Francisco is one of the few places in the United States to still have a cable car with an underground wire.  The cable car museum shows you the many components that are used to make this possible.

• New York has a long history of various types of cable cars.  Their Transit Museum website breaks down the differences between their various types of transportation.  Keep track of the differences because there will be important for your design.

• Most of these cars are fixed onto the cable and the cables move.  However, there are cars that move on a fixed cable.  The differences can be confusing but look out for them in this video of a cable can on the West Cost Trail in Canada.

Hopefully these websites allowed you to answer some important questions.  After looking at our research and doing some on your own you should be able to understand the difference between the different cable cars, how people go from concept to reality while making a cable car, and how various cable cars work. We encourage you to expand on this research and try to figure out what your customer may be as a cable car company.  Earlier this week Erik talked about design being not only important to customers but to the function of your cable car.  What design factors might make your car most efficient?  Happy researching!