Geschichte und Betrieb:supply-tramways

Eventualy the oppinion that farms and fruit growers have to follow the rules of industrial production becomes widely accepted. This implies that this agricultural enterprise has to be treated like an industry, the agro-industry. This is true for every kind of agriculture, no matter if they grow plants, or fruits, or if they produce animals for meat production, or breeding.

In horticulture light railways are well established to transport vegetables, straw, plants, soils, etc. The tip-car has proven to be the most versatile car. It carries soils and fertilizer, and with the skip removed and replaced by a wooden board, it can be used as flat-car to transport various goods like flowers in pots.

Naturaly beneath the tip-cars also exist flat-cars as well as special cars of any kind.
These cars, mainly used to transport fodder, manure, milk-cans, sacks etc. are found in agriculture mainly at larger stable and storage areas.

The "latest" developement to relieve the transportation of fodder into, and manure out of the stables, is the use of suspension railways or funiculars instead of track-bound railways. They are preferred in those locales where only narrow space is available, and therefore sharp corners will occur, or the traffic on the ground must not be disturbed for any instances.

You have to distinguish between funiculars, using cables as rail, and suspension railways, using real rail.
The funiculars just utilize simple cables to which the mostly basic cars are hung and run on. The cables are fastened inside a building to the walls, ceilings, or columns. Outside of buildings the cable is fastened to the most basicaly designed wooden or iron supports. The ends of the cables are either bolted to an available wall or to a pole with anchoring.
Suspension railways, see illustration beneath, are recommended for higher loads, or in case of necessity of numerous turnouts or turnplates. On suspension railways usually rails of double rail-head design are used. These offer a better relation between weight and load-bearing capacity. The rails are mounted to so-called hanging-shoes, which are bolted to the ceiling of a room, or fastened to a wall or column by means of a special wall-bracket.

The cars on suspension railways are, dependant on their usage, built to various designs, and even may have an automatical unloading device.
This unloading device is designed to hold the skip or loading-platform with a trap mounted to the car's suspenion. In case the stop-lever hits the trigger-device which is mounted to the cable or rail, the lever will be pushed down, causing the trap to rise and therefore release the skip / loading-platform, thus unloading the car.