Krossobanen
Encyclopedia
Krossobanen is an aerial tramway
Aerial tramway
An aerial tramway , cable car , ropeway or aerial tram is a type of aerial lift which uses one or two stationary ropes for support while a third moving rope provides propulsion...
in Rjukan
Rjukan
Rjukan is a town and the administrative center of Tinn municipality in Telemark . It is situated in Vestfjorddalen, between Møsvatn and Tinnsjå, and got its name after Rjukanfossen west of the town. The Tinn municipality council granted township status for Rjukan in 1996. The town has 3 386...
, Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
, and was the first of its kind in Northern Europe
Northern Europe
Northern Europe is the northern part or region of Europe. Northern Europe typically refers to the seven countries in the northern part of the European subcontinent which includes Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Finland and Sweden...
. It was built in 1928 by Bleichert
Bleichert
Adolf Bleichert & Co. was a famous German engineering firm.It was founded in 1874 by Adolf Bleichert and began to build bicable aerial tramwaysfor mining in the Ruhr. With important patents, and dozens of working systems in Europe, Bleichert...
as a gift from Norsk Hydro
Norsk Hydro
Norsk Hydro ASA is a Norwegian aluminium and renewable energy company, headquartered in Oslo. Hydro is the fourth largest integrated aluminium company worldwide. It has operations in some 40 countries around the world and is active on all continents. The Norwegian state holds a 43.8 percent...
to the people of Rjukan
Rjukan
Rjukan is a town and the administrative center of Tinn municipality in Telemark . It is situated in Vestfjorddalen, between Møsvatn and Tinnsjå, and got its name after Rjukanfossen west of the town. The Tinn municipality council granted township status for Rjukan in 1996. The town has 3 386...
(most of them Hydro employees), offering them a view of the sun which is obscured by the surrounding mountains during the winter months from October to March.
The horizontal distance between the lower and the upper station is 814 meters and the difference in altitude is 495 meters, which yields an average incline of 0.6: 1 (in other words, it climbs 60 centimeters for each meter traveled).