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Bergen, Norway: We took an 8 minute trip on the Fløibanen (a funicular or incline railway) to the top of Mt. Fløyen.  One of 8 mountains surrounding Bergen, Mt. Fløyen is 320 meters above sea level. The panoramic view of the city and the surrounding islands is outstanding, but can be very cold in October. It is an ideal starting point for mountain walks and is supposed to take 40 minutes to walk back down.

The Fløyen Restaurant at the top, built in 1925, was closed the day we were there. I was told it is open daily during the summer months when there are concerts every evening, but it's only open on weekends for the rest of the year (and no concerts). We sat in at a table in the souvenir shop since it was warm; and they sold hot chocolate and coffee, as well as waffles and jam. There is also a really nice playground for the kids.  And, it was being used by a group of rosy cheeked, bundled up kids from a local nursery school down in Bergen.  They didn't stay out too long even though they were dressed very warmly in snowsuits, hats, mittens and boots. 

The funicular runs every 30 minutes.  I think we went up at 11:00 am and came back down in the 12:00 noon tram to find it had started to rain down in Bergen. It rains (or snows) almost daily in this coastal town.  The funicular station is located not too far from the waterfront Fish Market where we headed to eat lunch and wait out the rain. After lunch during a break in the rain, we made it back up to the hotel.  I was too tired to go down to eat in the hotel dining room, falling asleep not long after we ate a local stew John got from the local grocery store deli.

Note: Funicular railways are much more common in Europe than they are in the USA.  There are 59 in Switzerland alone.  But, only about 20 in the US anymore where they are often called an incline railway.

  Here a few that are still in use today in the USA:

Johnstown, PA
Lookout Mountain in Tennessee-Georgia;
Royal Gorge Bridge near Pikes Peak, Colorado
and Pittsburgh, PA (where there used to be 15, but only two remain today).

A funicular has two counterbalanced cabins linked by a single cable that turns on a pulley. Each cabin is pulled as it rises but is merely guided as it descends, usually on the same track or a parallel track. They can take people and some (like the one in Johnstown) even take vehicles almost straight up the side of a mountain.  It is not the same as a train, which has an engine nor is it a cable car, which moves by way of cables beneath the street.  Funiculars peaked in popularity toward the end of the 19th century. 

I also recall one still in use near the Horsehoe Falls at Niagara Falls, Canada, though all the others have been replaced by elevators.

© 2001 JKH