WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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Welcome to Genoa, a beautiful port city in
the north of Italy.

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It's a very vertical city, built on a lot
of hills.

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So many hills, in fact, that the city has
several funicular railways and elevators

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tunnelled through the rock, shortcuts that
get around

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miles of twisty, congested roads or thousands
of stairs.

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And the strangest one of these is the Ascensore
Castello d'Albertis Montegalleto.

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Or: the castle elevator.

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Years ago, you'd have to walk through 300m
of tunnel yourself to reach the lift,

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but now, if you start at the bottom,

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an odd little square box comes to pick you
up.

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It looks a bit like a regular elevator car,
only going horizontally.

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You get on, it takes you the 300 metres through
the rock,

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past some control equipment and then,

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after a bit of shunting around with another
box that's headed the other way...

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It goes vertically,

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right up to the castle at the top of the hill.

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Now you might think, that's a great idea in
theory,

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it's like a Star Trek turbolift, but surely
that's dangerous?

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And I say that wearing a red shirt.

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Elevators need to have all sorts of protection
systems

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so one bad cable can't snap and cause disaster.

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How can they possibly make one that has all
that protection

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when it's got to detach itself and move off?

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The answer is: they can't. Because that's
not what it's doing.

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And in hindsight, the solution is kind of
obvious:

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there are two separate systems here.

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It's the same hack that Disney use for the
Tower of Terror at their theme parks:

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the bit that the passengers get into can only
go horizontally on its own.

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It attaches to a cable that pulls it along.

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When it reaches the lift shaft,

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it's actually getting into another, bigger
elevator,

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it attaches itself firmly to that,

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and then it gets hoisted up and down in safety

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as if it were a regular passenger elevator.

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It's a brilliant bit of engineering.

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And it's all so people don't have to walk
300 metres to a regular lift.

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