How it began
The cableway was built in Italian Eritrea by the Italian engineering firm Ceretti and Tanfani to carry freight between the port of Massawa and the capital, Asmara, on the edge of the highlands at about 2,326 meters above sea level. A first section of 26.6 kilometers, from Ghinda to Godaif, opened in August 1936, and the full line of nearly 72 kilometers was completed in 1937. Redaelli of Milan supplied the cables and Franco Tosi of Legnano the engines.
Before it existed
Goods moving between the sea and the highlands depended on the railroad and the road up the escarpment. A contemporary account reproduced by the Eritrean Ministry of Information presented the cableway as a way to double commercial traffic between the sea and the interior, and as an ideal link for population centers at very different altitudes separated by desert or forest.
How it works
It was a three-cable aerial system. Bearing cables were laid in almost 30 sections, and diesel engines drove the line. Freight rode in 1,540 small gondolas spaced about a hundred meters apart, which stopped at loading stations while the line kept moving. The system could carry 30 tons an hour in each direction. Its structural steel weighed almost two thousand tons, and the foundations took 15,000 cubic meters of concrete.
Who pushed back
The line worked for only a few years. After their victory at Keren in 1941 the British removed the engines, which put it out of operation. During their military administration of Eritrea from 1941 to 1952 they dismantled the installations and took diesel engines, steel cables and other equipment as war reparations.
What changed first
Working together with the railroad, the cableway was expected to account for almost the entire traffic between Massawa and Asmara. Intermediate stations served places along the route, including Dogali, Ghinda and Nefasit. It was recognized as the longest three-cable aerial line ever constructed, a record the Eritrean Ministry of Information still cites.
Where it stands today
Nothing of the working system survives. The towers stood for more than twenty years and were still in very good condition in 1962, and the remaining iron towers were scrapped in the 1980s. Wikipedia notes that the line was more than twice as long as the longest cableway now operating, a line of less than 35 kilometers in Lapland.
