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The Unique Tram System ... awesome engineering! |
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The Saint Louis Arch uses a very unique tram system to carry its visitors up to the top. What makes it so unique is that it starts out traveling horizontally underground, goes nearly vertical through shaft at the bottom, then ends up horizontal again at the top. It does all this while keeping the passengers standing upright. It is also unique because it has eight capsules that make up the trams. Each capsule holds five people. Amazingly, the designer of this tram system, Dick Bowser, never had a college degree. He had attended college at the University of Maryland, but dropped out to enlist in the Navy. He did have some experience with elevators though. He had worked with his father in developing the parking systems for elevators, some of which are unique cases that require the cars to movie horizontally or diagonally. His experience eventually led him to be chosen as the designer. |
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The first was a design based on elevators. The problem with this design is that it would require more than one elevator on each side, and a lot of extra mechanical equipment. In fact, so much mechanical equipment would be required that it would take up about six stories of space approximately halfway up the arch. The other design idea was to use an escalator system. This idea was decided against because of the enormous cost to manufacture all the stairs that would be required. Another flaw in this design is the fact that escalator stairs would not be able to make the curve required through parts of the arch. The arch design that you see today was not the original design. There were at least two other design ideas that were decided against. |
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