Hong Kong would soon have another world record - the largest cable car system after its installation in Tung Chung, as told by Mr Markus Sigrist, Construction Manager of Leitner, in a technical meeting organised by the CV Division on 28 April 2005.

Leitner was established in 1888 for the production of water turbines, material ropeways and agricultural machines and is now responsible for the design and installation of the largest cable car for the MTRC linking Tung Chung and Ngong Ping.

Mr Sigrist told our members that the first ropeways were built mainly to transport goods in an efficient way from one point to the other. In fact, the first-mentioned ropeway in history was for fortification in China in 400 BC! Since then, the design, construction, operation, monitoring and control of ropeways or now usually named as cableways have been advancing with the evolution of the new technology.

Today, the design of cable car uses mechanical modeling in three-dimensional analysis. Simulation models are also adopted in the excitation of dynamic forces. Innovation includes that the use of direct drive without gearbox since 1999, and PLC controls are being used for all the safety circuits and line signals now.

In the Tung Chung MTRC project, it is a milestone in the cable car history both in terms of its scale and project sum of around HK$900 million. The project comprises a 5.7 km cableway linking the two terminals at Tung Chung and Ngong Ping. The cableway will have eight towers in which five of them will be located in the Country Park. Each tower is weighted over 100 tonnes and its single components had to be mounted on-site because of the difficult access. Only two crews with eight members including three locals were required to complete a tower within ten days.

The Tung Chung cable car system is the largest ever built by Leitner. The challenge facing by the company is the installation and requirements of reliability. Towards this end, there would be two monitoring and control systems including one backup installed on-site. The Tung Chung Cable Car is expected to open to the public in early 2006.

The talk ended with a question and answer session. After Ir Arthur Yung proposed a vote of thanks to the speaker, Ir C C Chan presented the souvenir to Mr Sigrist at the request of Ir Prof William Lam, the chairman of the meeting.