1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a garage for storing vehicles of a continuous cable railway system which has a station track around which the vehicles drive slowly, are decoupled from the conveying cable, and fed over tracks from the station track to the garage.
2. Description of the Related Art
Cable railway systems have been in use for many years to convey passenger in vehicles, such as cable cars or the like, from a valley station to a mountain station and back again, for example. These valley and mountain stations are typically known as stopping stations.
Such stopping stations of continuous cable railways usually include coupling points on their incoming and outgoing sides, that is, the sides into which and out of which the vehicles are conveyed. At the incoming coupling point, the vehicles conveyed on the conveying cable at up to 6m/sec are decoupled from the cable and slowed to a slow loading velocity of about 0.2 to 0.8 m/sec, at which they drive around a landing on the track path of a station track from the incoming cable side to the outgoing cable side. During this time, passengers can exit or board the vehicle on the landing. At the outgoing coupling point, the vehicles are accelerated and synchronized with movement of the conveying cable and hence coupled again to the cable.
To change the number of used vehicles in a continuous cable railway to achieve a desired transport capacity, unused vehicles are typically parked momentarily on the side tracks of garages at the stopping station. The garaging capacity can be designed for all the vehicles which are side-tracked to protect them from the weather when taken out of operation from the cable railway system.
The side tracks of known garages are mostly loop-shaped, are loaded from the station track over an incoming switch and unloaded over an outgoing switch as described, for example, in European Patent Applications EP 306 771 B1 and EP 245 163 B1, as well as French Patent Application FR 24 96 029. The loop shape has an advantage that the side tracks can typically fit in existing side track areas. However, such side tracks cannot be loaded easily.
That is, the vehicles must exit the garage in the same sequence in which they entered it. The utilization of space in such garages is not optional due to the broad semi-circular arch that the vehicles must be driven through.
A garage with the features noted above which is disclosed in EP 369 981 B1 has only a single feeder track, the conveying direction of which from the station track to the side tracks for loading and unloading with vehicles is reversible. To load the station track with vehicles from the side tracks, the cable railway conveys in the normal operational direction. However, the conveying direction on the cable railway system must be reversed to load the vehicles onto the side tracks. This disrupts the normal operation of the system.
Also, when the transport capacity need only be momentarily changed, only individual vehicles should be taken from the cable railway operation. To perform this, a switch to the feeder track is arranged on the station track and each side track. Thus, a flexible loading and unloading of the side tracks is possible in this conventional garage. Also, this arrangement is more favorable in contrast to the loop shaped side tracks. That is, in this arrangement, the parallel side tracks can be set more closely together, since only a quarter circle arc must be driven at the switch in each case.
However, it is still desirable to achieve flexible loading and unloading of the side track without disrupting the normal operation of the cable railway system.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds