Funicular

©  2009  Rose George

I didn’t know that some funiculars were operated by water. You fill the top one with water so that it’s heavy and descends, and so that it pulls the bottom car up. Now I also know, thanks to a couple of readers who wrote to me recently, that in Fribourg, Switzerland, where two parts of town are separated by 375 feet of height, the funicular runs on sewage. Sewage is pumped into the top car – presumably out of sight and smell of its passengers, somehow – and works on the same principle as water. Treehugger explains this by saying that “if there is one thing that is always flowing from the top to the bottom, it is sewage.” I’m not particularly persuaded by that. Next time I’m in Fribourg, I plan to examine the “poo-poo train” (of course) more closely.