Tünel: Building and Opening the Underground Funicular from Galata to Pera

Galata, on the northern shore of the Golden Horn, brought together customs offices, shops, warehouses and financial activity. Pera, uphill, housed embassies, hotels and residences. Travel between them was frequent, but the connecting streets were narrow and steep. French civil engineer Eugène-Henri Gavand visited Constantinople, later Istanbul, in 1867 and identified this everyday transport problem.

Gavand compared his proposal to a lift moving up and down an incline. He planned a lower station near the Galata Bridge and an underground connection to Pera. The route addressed short journeys between the two levels, offering passengers a brief underground ride in place of the steep walk.

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The Ottoman government granted the construction concession on 10 June 1869. On 6 November that year, Public Works Minister Davud Pasha and Gavand signed the contract and technical conditions. The concession holder had to raise funds and buy the station sites; construction and operation were subject to the concession contract and Ottoman law.

The contract specified arrangements for financing and government oversight. Shares could be issued only after the company’s governing body was established and its statutes approved. The concession holder would pay the government 1.5 percent of revenue and the relevant property taxes. The concession lasted forty-two years, and the government gained the right to purchase the railway fifteen years after the contract’s approval. Construction finance, operating income and long-term ownership thus formed part of a single agreement.

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The railway connected its two stations on an underground incline. A 2014 technical history gives the tunnel’s structural length as 550.80 metres and the railway within it as 626 metres, with a tunnel width of 6.70 metres and height of 4.90 metres. The rails at Galata lay close to sea level, while the Pera end was about 62.70 metres higher. The engineering therefore had to overcome a rise of more than sixty metres within a short distance.

The longitudinal profile used a curved gradient: gentler at the lower end, increasingly steep uphill, and adjusted again near the upper end. Gavand’s drawings placed surface buildings, tunnel and stations in the same longitudinal section, showing the need to retain sufficient ground cover. The arrangement also used the weight of the trains on the two tracks in combination with cable movement, reducing the portions that depended entirely on steam power.

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The hauling machinery stood at the higher Pera end. Each of the two tracks used a flat cable, wound onto drums on a shared shaft. As one cable was wound in, the other was paid out, moving the two trains in opposite directions. The 2014 paper records two original steam engines rated at 150 horsepower each, as well as braking equipment on the carriages. Engines, cables and vehicles operated together on this fixed short route.

The original railway had two tracks, with each train travelling back and forth on its own track. Passenger carriages therefore did not need to carry a steam locomotive uphill. Each train comprised two cars, with passenger accommodation and platforms for goods, horses and vehicles. The initial service combined passenger and freight transport.

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The opening ceremony took place on 17 January 1875, and public service began on 18 January. The technical history records an early journey time of about two and a half minutes, different first- and second-class fares, return and concession tickets, and tariffs for goods and animals. These operating arrangements turned the engineering installation into a regularly available urban transport service.

The same study reports approximately 75,000 passenger journeys during the fourteen days from 18 to 31 January. Traffic subsequently grew, with fare reductions also accompanied by increased use. Tünel’s most immediate contribution was to substitute a paid ride for the steep walk and to ease the movement of passengers’ belongings and some goods between the commercial district and the neighbourhoods uphill.

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In 1875, Tünel combined an underground incline, two stations and stationary hauling machinery into a complete short railway. The tunnel was one part of the system: stations, machinery, cables, vehicles and brakes had to function together. Its engineering value lay in organising dedicated transport around an urban bottleneck with a substantial difference in elevation.

The railway closed for reconstruction in 1968 and reopened with a new electrically powered system in 1971. The reconstruction introduced metal-bodied vehicles and rubber tyres, and changed the track layout to a mostly single-track route with a passing section in the middle. The original carriage classes were abolished. The connection between the upper and lower districts continued, while the vehicles, power supply and track arrangement were redesigned.

References: [1] [2]