Funicular railways take gradients to the extreme, running two cars in counterbalanced, contrary motion over often-perilous cliff inclines. They are a dramatic invention, and certainly one of the more romantic railway concepts. Such romanticism is revealed in the stories of the Victorians, who travelled in an age when adoption of these railways was widespread. One 1886 story (author unknown) tells of a hero who "scales the spurs of the Alps and the cone of Vesuvius by the aid of [...] funicular railways".
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