The Carmelit 🚃 – Mad-in-Israel

Hi,
Election day 2022 has came (the change government held up only one year) and we decided to have a Public Transportation day in Haifa, which ended up focusing on the Carmelit.

It is the first subway in Israel and opened in 1959 after a bit less+. 3 years of working (while the red line of the light train in Tel Aviv is under work for 8 years and still have not opened).

The Carmelit is not really a train, but an underground funicular: a system of 2 cars pulled by cable (each 80 ton, 33m long), when one car goes down it pulls the other car up.

It was the fastest funicular when it built – 8.3 m/s while the rest went only up to 4 m/s. It was due to the fact it used a special way of stopping (the way trucks stops, not trains). It allowed the Carmalit to make its way up (or down) in only 6 minutes. During the years the time lengthen to 10 min due to safety reasons.

Because the Carmelit is built on the slope of mount Carmel (and this is where its name comes from) both the cars and the stations has steps built inside it. There are 6 stations with about 350m horizontal distance between it and they cover an height difference of about 280m.

They stations are about 16-17m deep on average, when Paris square station is only 6 m deep (it is the lowest station and sits in the underground water, so it better be high as possible to avoid the water). 5 of the 6 stations have oscillators so the max vertical climb for a pedestrian is 3.5m.

The tunnel is 3.3m wide and 4.2m high, and were at the point the cars are passing each other the tunnel widen to allow them to cross.

The tunnel was excavated using drilling holes in the rock (48 in number, 1.3m deep) and using Gelgnite 30% explosive to blow the rock. The rock pieces were then put on cars and sent down the tunnel. The explosive had an amplitude of 35 micron, and the fear was of damage to the old buildings on the ground. An English company approved with experiments that the buildings can hold up to 60 micron. But the people living in it will still feel it as their feet can feel explosives of even 5 micron.

They manage to excavate 3m a day in two shifts. When the tunnel slope got to 30% the cars could not drive by itself and a had to be pulled up with a crane. After excavating 900m (about half the tunnel length) the rock became much less stiff – the progress rate went down to 1.5m a day and there was need to cast concrete walls along the tunnel (you can see the difference during the ride)

We had a short ride in the Metronit (which are high trafffic buses with special lanes) and skipped the new Rakavlit (the cable car climbing to Haifa university on top of the mountain) for long lines.

Take Care

Gad

The Technical information is referenced from Rear Window site in Hebrew, where also the old picture are copied and were you can see the Carmelit cars used between 1992 to 2017.

You can see more pictures and explanation on the Carmelit system in Hebrew in Guy Sachar site.

Bialik station of The Red line of Tel-Aviv light train system could Dankal. It was to be opened this month but postponed for at least 4 months more (we could have catch it to the train station to Haifa)

Bialik station of The Red line of Tel-Aviv light train system could Dankal. It was to be opened this month but postponed for at least 4 months more (we could have catch it to the train station to Haifa)

Paris square station, the lowest station