Moving cargo up a thousand feet on manual windlasses was a supply bottleneck that Giles Croft refused to tolerate.
Lord Giles Croft stood at the edge of the lower railway freight end-post. He looked up the upright cliff face of Grey Crag.
The sheer granite wall soared into the morning mist, wet with mountain water drops that dripped steadily onto the crushed-ballast railbeds below.
Above him, four massive upright steel lattice guide towers rose like ladder rails toward the underside of the floating sky-wharf.
Each tower was framed from six-inch angle iron, cross-braced every ten feet with heavy tie-rods to withstand lateral wind gusts.
Beside him, Master Duncan Stone-Splitter held a heavy bronze line weight suspended from a piano wire, squinting up the soaring steel columns.
“One thousand and twenty feet from rail yard to flight deck,” Duncan said, his voice respectful and low.
“The miners call it the Chimney of the Clouds.
