It’s often only when something breaks that you learn how it works. Occasionally, I use the funiculars dotted around Lisbon to quickly navigate steep, sweat-inducing hills. They don’t feel dangerous; a touch precarious, perhaps, but only because the fin-de-siecle contraptions, with their angular poise against the steep inclines and narrow wooden benches, seem so unlikely. But I hadn’t thought about how they actually function until the tragic accident at the Elevador da Glória last week: two carriages at either end of the climb, connected under the track by a haulage wire in perfect balance, provide a counterweight to propel each other, with the help of an electric cable overhead.
Last Wednesday evening, during rush hour, a cable connecting two of those carriages reportedly disconnected, causing the higher one to careen downhill, derailing and crashing into a nearby building at high speed. Sixteen people were killed with 20 more injured; five are still in a critical condition.
