Table Mountain cableway maintenance to require a five-week shutdown: TMACC
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Image: Table Mountain Aerial Cableway Company
The Table Mountain Aerial Cableway Company is in its second week of maintenance Shutdown and the team has been hard at work repairing the cableway in time for end of August deadline.
Table Mountain Aerial Cableway Company (TMACC) says its cable car maintenance operations are on track and all indications are that operations would resume on time towards the end of the month for the public.
Table Mountain cableway undergoes maintenance
TMACC initiated a five-week closure at the end of last month to perform maintenance. The maintenance service is performed in accordance with a service schedule that is time, usage, and condition dependent.
Technical Executive Manager, Emile Streicher says many of the specified service intervals are more than six years and servicing tasks usually differ from year to year.
“So at the moment the main part of the work is to shift our track ropes which are the thicker of the cables that you will see on the mountain they actually carry the weight of the cable car or the majority of it. So they are actually our stress point which we need to move out of the system which is about three hundred cycles which is around 12 years period,” adds Streicher.
Managing Director for Table Mountain Aerial Cableway Company, Wahida Parker, says international cableway technical experts have been roped in to do the maintenance work for the company.
Service to commence soon
The operation is conducted every 12 years, but this time it has taken the company 14 years to do this due to COVID-19 restrictions as it impacted the travel arrangements for international experts who are an integral part of the maintenance operation.
Parker says the work which started at the end of July is expected to be completed on time to allow visitors to utilise the services once more before the end of the month.
She adds that intervention resulted in no international travel and because of that a lot of the intricate and complex work that required support from manufacturers abroad; we were unable to supply them.
“…So now we have decided that during the two years of COVID-19 we will continue to do the maintenance after hours without the shutdown, but this year then we decided to bring all the experts in,” Parker explains.
Tasks being undertaken include replacing wood on the track ropes, overhauling and testing the slack carriers, performing non-destructive testing on all steel wire ropes, shortening the heel-rope, and performing safety-critical tests for the emergency brakes.