Montmartre Funicular

The Montmartre Funicular carries passengers up the steep slope toward the Sacre-Coeur Basilica in a pair of glass cabins. It replaces a grueling three hundred step climb with a ninety second ascent. When it opened in nineteen hundred, the system relied on a curious water-powered counterweight mechanism. Engineers filled the descending car with water to pull the ascending car up the hill. Today, electric motors do the work, moving nearly two million riders every year along the iron tracks.