抄録
Endless rope railways have heretofore been widely utilized for haulage of ore or broken stone in many mines but the method was considered suitable only for short distances of about 1 kilometer or less.
The writer, at the Okutama Limestone Quarry under his management, has installed an endlessrope- traction railroad of five-kilometer length for efficient haulage of large quantities of crushed limestone. This system was adopted in order to avoid the huge construction costs that would have been entailed had normal railroad been constructed over the craggy mountainous topography of the projected route.
Construction costs were about half that of a regular narrow gauge railway, while after several years of operation it has been found that the running expenses come to less than half those of a railway line.
(Improvement Features)
A completely automatic cable clip was devised, permitting a rope speed more than double that of ordinary endless rope railway.
In designing and selecting the route, deflections were possibly avoided and curve radii were kept at more than 200m. Grade is downward throughout the entire line and at the point of change of grade vertical curve of large radius were used, thus permitting extremely smooth coursing and rotation of rope for efficient high-speed operation with surprisingly low consumption of power.
