How do funicular railways work? Funicular railways operate through a rack and pinion system, where a toothed flywheel on a locomotive or piece of rolling stock connects to a toothed rail, thus, pulling the train along the guide rails.
A funicular, or cog railway traces its routes to England in 1812, when the cog railway was invented by John Blenkinsop. During the pioneering days of the railway, Blenkinsop believed that locomotives would struggle to gain traction by adhesion alone. Therefore, in the early 19th century, he patented his form of the cog railway, in which a toothed rail was located outside the track gauge, and operated by a cog wheel on the locomotive, thus improving traction power.
Blenkinsop began producing locomotives with cog wheels for the newly constructed Middleton Railway, which was a privately owned railway built for the purpose of hauling coal for the local colliery. The locomotive was built with a cog wheel, which engaged a toothed rack, which included roughly two teeth per foot of track. The first cog locomotive, Salamanca, built by prominent engineer Matthew Murray, was the first commercially successful steam locomotive. With the advancement of the railway underway, locomotives operating under adhesion alone was becoming the standard, especially with the opening of the Stockton and Darlington and Liverpool and Manchester railways. This form of rack railway is considered rack and adhesion, as the locomotive provided power, however, the cog system provided the additional tractive effort. The rack system on the Middleton Railway became antiquated, and was removed in 1837, in favor of adhesion locomotives. Although the Middleton Railway lacked steep grades, the cog system was only utilized to assist in hauling the heavy coal chaldrons from the collieries.