- The first D-Line chairlift will open at Hochfügen, Austria with Doppelmayr’s new, wider six-passenger chairs for 2016-17.
- Four lifts from the defunct Talisman Mountain Resort in Ontario are up for sale on Resort Boneyard: A 1968 Hall double, 1987 Frankenlift quad, 1987 Poma triple and 1991 BM Lifts quad. A fifth chairlift is noticeably absent.
- Leitner and Aguido complete the world’s longest conveyor ropeway stretching 4.3 miles in Brazil.
- Doppelmayr flies the guide rope for the newest gondola in La Paz with a drone (video here.)
- Progress report and photos from the two new lift projects at Big Sky.
- Cannon Mountain’s board discusses moving the Brookside triple to The Banshees area.
- The new six-pack at Le Relais looks sharp in gray.
- Sigma’s new gondola cabin is reportedly called the Symphony 10.
- The entire 2016 Jägerndorfer Collection model ski lift line is now available in the States.
- Group proposes Sea to Sky-style gondola attraction in Nelson, BC.
D-Line
News Roundup: Signs of Life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0QgeMl2-ck
- Another of Ascutney Mountain’s old lifts is headed for Pats Peak.
- A local firm will conduct a feasibility study for an urban gondola across the Hudson River in Albany, NY.
- The 11th International Ropeway Congress will be held in Italy next June.
- Work might begin at The Balsams this Fall.
- Signs of life with lift maintenance ongoing at Saddleback.
- Check out these sweet photos of the big new 3S that turns at Mayrhofner Bergbahnen.
- Doppelmayr will build at least four new D-Line lifts in Europe this summer.
- SAM looks at resorts formalizing training for lift mechanics.
- Grouse Mountain will launch the Skyride Surf Adventure™ on Friday (yes, they trademarked the name.)
Soelden Announces Record-Breaking Giggijochbahn
Soelden, Austria unveiled its record-breaking gondola today called Giggijochbahn, to open next winter with the ability to carry 4,500 passengers per hour. The ropeway will feature Doppelmayr’s next-generation D-Line components and two modern terminal buildings, one featuring panoramic images of the Alps and the other showing off ropeway technology behind real glass. The top terminal will have parking for most of the lift’s 134 CWA Omega IV-10-D cabins. Innsbruck architect Johann Obermoser designed the stations in collaboration with Soelden and Doppelmayr.
This will be an impressive system by any measure with 3,022 feet of vertical rise and an 8,688-foot slope length. Travelling at the record-breaking speed of 6.5 m/s (1,280 fpm) the ride will take just 8.87 minutes. The fastest monocable gondolas in the world currently top out at 1,212 fpm. The Giggijochbahn will have 26 towers and a 62 mm haul rope driven by a ~2,180 HP electric motor. The biggest innovation will be the capacity – reaching 4,500 passengers per hour, per direction. I believe 3,600 is the current capacity record for a monocable gondola, a record shared between many lifts including the 10-passenger Gondola One at Vail and the 15-passenger Village Gondola at Mammoth.
News Roundup: Dramatic
- Leitner Ropeways publishes its Annual Report for 2015.
- Peak Resorts discontinues dividend for shareholders in continuing effort to save cash with $118 million in liabilities.
- Whaleback nonprofit decides a surface lift is key to the New Hampshire mountain’s future.
- Val Neigette, Quebec seized by creditors.
- Big SNOW America inches closer to opening.
- The Roosevelt Island Tramway turned 40 yesterday.
- The Hermitage Club at Haystack Mountain is up to 875 members and $114 million in assets. American Skiing Company sold the property in 2005 for a mere $5 million.
- Wynn Resorts’ $4.1 billion casino in Macau will have a Doppelmayr gondola that runs in a rectangle.
News Roundup: Vermont
- In the wake of fraud allegations and a federal takeover, Q Burke Mountain Resort will lose the Q and likely be sold within a year.
- At Jay Peak, Doppelmayr says the 52-year old aerial tramway needs $4.15 million in repairs. In a press conference, the Florida lawyer put in charge of both properties said “we’re not even sure we have to fix the tram. The company that tells us we have to fix it is also the one that will get the contract.” At least he’s stopped calling it a gondola.
- A new lease for Ascutney Mountain will allow a nonprofit group to build up to three lifts at the ski area, which closed in 2008. Skytrac removed Ascutney’s four CTECs from 2012-2014 and sold them to Crotched Mountain, Pats Peak and Liberty Mountain. A 1970 Hall double remains standing on the property.
- Washington, DC taps the same company that conducted the feasibility study for the Portland Aerial Tram to study the proposed Georgetown Gondola.
- A D-Line gondola is coming to Innsbruck.
- The Mi Teleferico “My Cable Car” network in La Paz carried 43 million passengers in its first 22 months with 99.3% reliability.
Take a Virtual Tour of Doppelmayr’s D-Line
Yesterday Doppelmayr released a series of videos on YouTube highlighting the specifications and features of the company’s latest evolution in detachable technology called D-Line. While these are computer animations, there is a real-life prototype at Doppelmayr’s Wolfurt campus and the launch customer opened the first D-Line gondola last December in Hochgurgl, Austria. The first video highlights the CWA Omega IV SI D cabin, which has a simplified hanger and larger overall dimensions. 10-passenger cabins appear to be the standard for D-Line rather than 8-passenger cabins.
You can also take a tour of the detachable grip-D with a virtual tear-down. The grip-D can support ropes up to 64mm in diameter, carry up to 4,000 lbs and operate on 45-degree rope inclines.
Perhaps most interesting is the Station-D, which has gotten some negative reaction for its appearance. We now learn there is a boxier version utilizing real glass that can even be customized into a video wall.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQ3sOsEPujY
D-Line will be available in North America in 2017 alongside the current-generation UNIG terminals and Agamatic/DT grips offered by Doppelmayr.
More on Doppelmayr’s D-Line
More pictures and details are filtering out from Hochgurgl, Austria where the Kirchenkarbahn opened Dec. 10th. This 10-passenger gondola wouldn’t be particularly notable but for the fact that it’s Doppelmayr’s first production model of the next-generation detachable lift called D-Line.
First a little history. Doppelmayr introduced the Uni-G terminal in 2000, replacing the “Spacejet” model of the 1990s. After the merger of Doppelmayr and Garaventa in 2002, the company continued to offer Stealth III and Uni-G detachable lifts in the US. In 2003, Doppelmayr CTEC added a North American-design called the Uni-GS and built 88 of them before discontinuing the model in 2009. With the Stealth gone since 2004, the Uni-G became the only Doppelmayr detachable product worldwide until now.
German architect Werner Sobek designed the D-Line terminal and he’s apparently well known-enough to have an English Wikipedia page. His enclosure is almost entirely composed of windows with a modern, boxy look that I’m not sold on. Setting appearance aside, Doppelmayr says D-Line can support line speeds of up to 7 m/s or 1,378 feet a minute. This is a big deal; the fastest circulating ropeway I know of today maxes out at 1,212 FPM. The Kirchenkarbahn uses a gearbox from Eisenbeiss and controls from Frey Austria.
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