..climb half-way off the drawing boards..." Pictured here is one of the four cable-cars in the city of Naples; this is a car on the Montesanto line as it pulls into the station on the street named Corso Vittorio Emanuele (V.E.) It comes up from the main station in the city (photo, below left), makes this stop and then finishes at the top station on the Vomero hill at about 600 feet. The Corso V.E. station is one-third of the way up; at the half-way point (in a tunnel), the single track will split into a double track to allow the car coming down at the same time (remember, the cars are at opposite ends of the same cable) to pass the one going up. When the down-car then stops at this station in the picture, the car on the way up also stops, but at a "blank station"-an empty spot in the tunnel-and waits. Then, they both start again and finish the run at the top and bottom stations, respectively. The other cable cars in Naples don't have a "blank" along the way; there really are stations at those points.

The plan was to turn that blank spot on the Montesanto line into a real station (since the car has to stop there anyway). There is no real street at that spot that would be served by a new station, but with some ingenious engineering, it would make it easier to reach the great tourist attraction of the Sant' Elmo fortress and adjacent San Martino museum. That is, the way it works now is that you ride the cable-car to the top, get off and then walk about 10-minutes over to the Vomero look-out, overlooking the city and directly in front of both the fortress and the museum.

But, what if...heh-heh, here's the ingenious part...you put a station at that blank spot, a station that was essentially at the bottom of an elevator shaft and then ran the elevator up to a spot on the street in front of the museum and the fortress. It would mean tunneling over from the track and new station to a spot directly beneath that point near the museum and then running the shaft up about 200 feet to the new station. The new station at the top would look like the image (below, second from left).

Inside the station, you get ticket booths, turnstiles, a spectacular view of Vesuvius, and stairs leading down to the former "blank" station. There are four elevators not shown in this artist's rendition, although I think you might want to walk down and enjoy the view. Maybe on the way up from the cable-car station-named "Sant'Elmo"-you might want to catch a lift. A plan to do all this was approved in 2001. The whole deal was going to cost five million euros and be finished in 2005. Uh-the cable car is late. I mean really late. The abandoned building that was to serve as the nucleus for the station near the museum is still boarded up. Notices announcing the new station are still appended, but have been appropriately defaced. Work hasn't started yet.