About Great Orme Tramway

The Great Orme Tramway (Welsh: Tramffordd y Gogarth) is a cable-hauled 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) gauge tramway in Llandudno in north Wales. It is Britain's only remaining cable operated street tramway and one of only three surviving in the world. Operation of the tramway differs from the better-known San Francisco system in that it is not a self-propelled cable car but rather a street running funicular. The cars are permanently fixed to the cable and are stopped and started by stopping and starting the cable. As one car is ascending, the other is descending, and they meet midway.

The tramway was built in 1902 to take passengers to the summit of the Great Orme and is in two sections. There are two cars on each section. The two sections operate independently and are mechanically different. The lower section is built on or alongside the public road and has gradients as steep as 1 in 3.8. The cable on this section runs out of sight below the road surface in a conduit between the rails. The bottom half of the section is single track, but above the passing loop it has interlaced double track.

In comparison, the upper section is less steep with a maximum gradient of 1 in 10 and is single track apart from a short double track passing loop equipped with Abt type points to accommodate the cable.

The original power house, situated at the Halfway station between the lower and upper sections, was equipped with winding gear powered by steam from coke-fired boilers. This was replaced in 1958 by electrically powered apparatus. In 2001, the entire Halfway station, its control room and its power plant were completely rebuilt and re-equipped.

The tramway uses four tramcars, in service since 1902. An overhead wire telegraph was formerly used for communication between the tram and the engineer-driver in charge of winding the drum, but it has been replaced by an induction loop radio-control system.

The tramway has three main stations, the lower station, named after the hotel that formerly occupied the station site, the one in the centre aptly named 'Halfway' and the Great Orme Summit station. Passengers must change trams at the Halfway station.