Ascensor da Glória, Funicular railway in Restauradores Square, Lisbon, Portugal.
The Glória Funicular runs 275 metres (902 ft) along Calçada da Glória on 900 mm tracks, climbing a 17.7% slope between Restauradores Square and the São Pedro de Alcântara Garden. Its two cars, numbered 1 and 2, have yellow lower bodies, orange upper sections and grey roofs, with a single round headlight and a black metal rack on top. Inside, slatted wooden benches face each other beneath a white panelled ceiling with a fan.
Built in 1885 with a water counterweight system, the railway switched to steam power in 1886 and underwent electrification between 1914 and 1915, with technology modernized multiple times over the decades.
The funicular appears in the 1987 song "O Elevador da Glória" by the Macau band Rádio Macau, released as a maxi single and on an eponymous LP. Since 2013 the Subida à Glória, a time-trial bicycle climb of the full route open to professionals and amateurs, has been revived; a race of the same name ran between 1913 and 1926.
Service runs every 12 minutes starting at 7:15 AM on weekdays, with tickets available from drivers at 3.80 euros for same-day round trips or payment possible with Lisbon public transport cards.
The cars are numbered 1 and 2 and are permanently joined by a buried cable looped over a pulley at the top of Calçada da Glória, so one always descends as the other climbs, each acting as the other's counterweight. Unusually for a funicular, electric motors on board the cars drive the axles, fed by trolleybus-style overhead wires at 600 V DC.
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