The Funicular Of Saint Hilaire Du Touvet

The clanking cable car crawls up the side of this lush french hillside so casually you would think that the sun and stars never moved. Foreigners and friendly local folk jointly enjoy the beautiful view of the valley below in an awed silence that truly appreciates this magnificent and rich landscape. This slow climb is the perfect time to rest and remember that not all things move at a city's pace, and that some things are best left in their sweet slow summer solitude. A funicular is a cable railway in which a cable attached to a pair of tram-like vehicles on rails moves them up and down a steep slope; the ascending and descending vehicles counterbalance each other. Until the funicular was built, the village of St. Hilaire du Touvet was accessible only on foot, or by mule. Its construction was started in 1920 and it was opened in 1924, principally to serve several sanatoria built to house tuberculosis patients. A road has long since been opened, and the funicular is now used mostly by tourists and paragliders. Until 1955, the funicular was served by two 40 passenger cars. These were replaced in that year by a more modern design of car, carrying 60 passengers each. In 1992, these were in turn replaced by new cars to a retro design, not dissimilar to the original cars. This sound uses the following file from Freesound: http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=107582