A specialist engineering team from Qualter Hall in Yorkshire has recently returned from South Korea, following the successful installation and commissioning of a major new funicular railway system.

POSCO Engineering — a major South Korean civil engineering company — awarded Qualter Hall the contract to carry out the design and manufacture in Barnsley and then deliver, install and commission the railway system at ChooChoo Park in Gangwon Province (the resort provides skiing, scenic mountain views, nature trails, golf, hotels and other leisure facilities).

The contract was won against international competition, thanks to Qualter Hall’s special expertise in transport systems incorporating cable management and winders. This project has an additional feature: four-wheeled family rail ‘bikes’ that are hauled up the mountain by the trains and then travel down on a separate meandering rail track.

The funicular railway system provides loop-type simultaneous operation of two trains (two carriages per train), one going up the gradient while the other descends, connected by a continuous cable driven by a 400kW friction winder.

The trains run on a single track with a central ‘pass-by’ to enable them to pass each other. Qualter Hall also supplied Legoland’s Windsor Park Hill Train in the UK, which is similar to the system supplied to Korea, but without the family rail ‘bikes’.