The air changes
on the way up.
One carriage. Two rails. Eight hundred and thirty-three metres of hill. Take the car and climb — George Town falls away below your knees, the jungle thins into cloud, and somewhere past the middle station your arms remember what cold was.
Two kilometres of hill, one cable, since 1923.
Two cars, counter-weighted on a single haul rope: as one climbs, the other comes down to meet it, and they pass at the loop halfway. In the old days we ran it on water — fill the top tank, let its weight pull you up, drain it at the bottom. The rebuild in 2011 gave us the through-run and cut the trip to under six minutes, but the hill did not get any shorter, and it did not get any warmer near the top. It still drops about six degrees between the wharf and the flagstaff. Bring a cardigan; the tourists never believe me until Clifford Halt.
— the timetable is a suggestion the monkeys have never agreed to.