Veterans Memorial Recreation Area to Replace T-Bar

The bottom of the T-Bar in late winter 2023, its 69th season carrying skiers across two different locations.

A little community ski area in Franklin, NH is going to look very different in three years. The haul rope on the vintage 1953 Heron-built Constam T-bar at Veterans Memorial Recreation Area (VMRA), the last one operating in New Hampshire, is wearing out. The lift was the Summit T-Bar at nearby Mt. Sunapee from its construction in 1953 to 1967, when it was reinstalled and modified by local lift manufacturer O.D. Hopkins Associates in only one off-season. If VMRA had decided to keep the lift, the volunteers would be faced with a difficult task: re-machining all of the cast-iron sheave wheels, which don’t have the usual rubber or urethane liners (in other words, elastomer liners), to fit the new rope. If you look closely in the photograph above, you can see that the treads of the sheave wheels on the drive terminal and the first tower are very shiny. This is because the motion and weight of the cable has worn the rust off, the same reason that heavily used trains have shiny wheels. Several other early-era lift manufacturers made all-metal sheaves like these, such as Larchmont Engineering and even the Union Pacific Railroad, for its early single chairlifts at Sun Valley, ID. A big problem with the replacement of the T-Bar is that VMRA doesn’t have a three-phase alternating current (AC) electrical line running nearby. If the new T-bar has an electric system that needs three-phase AC, there will be no way to power it without an inefficient, bulky, and expensive phase converter. I do not know the details on this, unfortunately. This means that the new lift will be powered by an internal combustion engine, likely another diesel engine.

The 1953 General Motors diesel prime mover, making a lot of noise as usual.

I have been told by a volunteer that a suitable lift has been donated, but I was unable to find out more about it. I do know, thanks to another volunteer, that the old 1953 prime mover (see above) is being rebuilt this summer to keep it going for the next few years. However, for a while, and especially now, the T-Bar has seemed to be running on borrowed time. For example, a few years ago, it had derail switches and new cable catchers installed, but there was no enough clearance between the carriers and the distance a code-specified cable catcher extends! It was given an allowance of some kind to permit it to operate with cable catchers that don’t extend quite as far. This means that a reinstallation of it is likely out of the question. However, the question remains: is there a way to save it? If so, what is it and how could it be done? Only time will tell.