Funicular Service Penang Hill

This guide to the Penang Hill funicular traces a bet three British men made that steel rails could tame this slope, and the 1897 steam railway that failed the climb. It follows the young engineer brought in afterward to design something sturdier, and the tunnel his crews blasted through rock so steep it was called the steepest in the world. Trial runs began quietly in 1923, watched by builders who still remembered the earlier failure.