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Water powered funicular in England

The Lynton and Lynmouth Cliff Railway is a water powered funicular joining the twin towns of Lynton and Lynmouth on the rugged coast of North Devon in southwest England. Lynton and Lynmouth are separated by a high cliff, making it hard for people and goods to move between them. In the late 1800s, interest arose in building a funicular or cliff lift to join them. The civil engineer George Croydon Marks played a key role in both its design and bringing in financing from his business partner, Sir George Newnes. Local contractor Robert Jones was involved in designing the funicular's innovative braking system and the line's construction and maintenance in the first decades of its operation. In 1887, construction commenced and a year later, an Act of Parliament authorised the Lynmouth & Lynton Lift Company to operate it. The completed railway was opened on Easter Monday 1890; it has been in continuous use since. While early use was largely focused on moving freight, the funicular railway became popular with tourists and it became mostly used for passenger travel. Its flat platforms were converted into passenger carriages in 1947. It is the world's highest and steepest water powered cliff railway in operation.

The high cliffs separating Lynton and Lynmouth made travel and economic development in the area difficult. and has been in continuous use ever since. The cars were horizontal platforms with sprung, demountable passenger carriage bodies on them. Larger freight items, including motor cars, were moved by the railway into the late 1950s. During rail replacement operations in winter 2006, the halt was used for access and material storage. In April 2018, the cliff railway was briefly closed for safety checks following a landslip near the middle bridge. The collapse, caused by a combination of heavy rain, freezing conditions, and high winds, deposited debris onto the track; the railway was not operating at the time.

The railway has two cars, each carrying up to 40 passengers. They are attached to cables running up and down from each car and passing round 5 feet (2 m) pulleys at each end of the incline, an example of a bottom towrope used to balance the weight of the cables. The system originally used single cables, but this was later replaced by double cables, presumably as a safety measure. During the descent, the speed is controlled by a driver in each car; they communicate using hand signals to synchronise their efforts. Due to the steepness of the railway, the original carriages incorporated four independent braking systems, the primary system using hydraulically actuated callipers that directly clamp onto the under side of the rail heads, secondary friction brakes are provided by steel shoes that press onto the rails; water instead of oil is used as hydraulic fluid, a unique feature of the Lynmouth & Lynton Cliff Railway. The lower platform was fitted with inter connected hydraulic buffers the arriving down car would push the water from its pair of buffers through a narrow pipe into the opposite pair, thus setting them for the next descending car. In June 1888, the braking arrangement was jointly patented by Newnes, Jones and Marks. The wooden sleepers have since been replaced with modern concrete ones.