Fifty tons of hard dark metal steel begins to fall through ninety feet of empty air. Then, the laws of the mountain are rewritten by speed and cable friction.
Inside the twin winch houses straddling the Grand Bypass Channel, the disengagement of the main pawls was not a clean clockwork shift. It was an explosion of stored striking force. The ten-foot cast-iron drums, each carrying one hundred tons of spinning heavy rush, began to spin with a terrifying, speeding up scream that drowned out the roar of the wind.
The four-inch braided Swedish wire ropes uncoiled from the drum grooves in a blinding blur of gray metal and atomized grease. Droplets of black cable lubricant were flung against the timber rafters in nonstop sheets. It hissed like thrown gravel against the pine boards.
“Brake!” Master Gault roared in the western winch house, his red beard bristling with sweat. “Screw down the friction bands! Don’t let her run wild!”
Four burly wagon drivers threw their chests against the four-spoke iron hand-wheel of the compound screw brake. The eight-inch-wide shoes of seasoned white oak slammed down against the polished iron brake rims of the drum.
The stench of burning wood was instant and overwhelming. Thick, pungent clouds of blue smoke erupted from the brake bands as the seasoned oak charred to ash under thirty thousand foot-pounds of spinning friction. Sparks showered across the floorboards in fountains of orange fire, put out instantly by two apprentices throwing buckets of cold river slurry directly…
