Share this @internewscast.com
The Office for the Prevention and Investigation of Accidents in Civil Aviation and Rail (GPIAAF) carried out an investigation revealing that a critical steel cable linking the two carriages of the historic Glória funicular failed shortly after they commenced their journeys along Calçada da Glória, the street where the funicular operates.
According to the report released yesterday, an inspection conducted the morning of the incident had found “no issues with the vehicles’ cable or braking systems.” However, the section where the cable eventually broke was “not visible” during this inspection.
This cable failure caused the carriage located at the top of the street to pick up speed as it went down the slope, eventually derailing. The GPIAAF report noted that the initial collision occurred at approximately 60 km/h and that these events unfolded in less than 50 seconds.
No firm conclusions can yet be drawn regarding the exact causes of the incident as further investigation is needed, GPIAAF said.
Funiculars use a system where one car’s descent helps another car to ascend, based on a counterweight pulley mechanism. The investigation found that the two Glória carriages had only traveled about six meters when they “unexpectedly lost the balancing force provided by the connecting cable.”
The report highlighted that the failure of the cable at the attachment point within the upper carriage, which started its route at the top of the Calçada da Glória, was “immediately evident.” A photograph in the report depicts a large, frayed cable lying on the ground.
Upon the cable breaking, the upper cabin’s brakeman “promptly engaged both the pneumatic and hand brakes in an effort to stop the movement,” but these measures were “ineffective in halting or slowing the cabin’s speed, leading it to accelerate further down the slope,” as noted by the report.
In their current configuration, the carriage’s air brake and manual brake “do not have sufficient capacity to stop the cabins in motion without their empty masses being mutually balanced by the connecting cable,” the report added.
The rest of the cable and the pulleys through which it runs were “without apparent significant anomalies,” the report said.
In addition, the cable itself, which had been installed 337 days prior to the incident, was said to have a “defined useful life of 600 days.”
Among those killed in the incident were five Portuguese citizens, three Britons, two Canadians, two South Koreans, and individuals from Switzerland, Ukraine, the US and France were confirmed to have died, Portugal’s Judicial Police said in a statement.
A full preliminary report into the incident is expected to be published within 45 days, GPIAAF said, followed by a final report within a year.
