Plans for a cable car in London are as old as Victorian inventiveness — for example, this double-decker cable car which would have run from Monument in the City over to Hyde Park Corner.
Very sadly, never built.
The New Aerial Omnibus
In consequence of the repeated blocking up of the principal London thoroughfares, a plan has been proposed for opening two lines of communication by means of strong lines of rope, capable of bearing the weight of vehicles.
So that by suspending the carriages, the inconvenience of suspending the intercourse between different points will be altogether avoided. It is evident that the only method of surmounting the difficulties of transit which are being raised continually by paviours, commissioners of sewers, and others, is by literally passing over them.
Stations for taking up and setting down might be opened at the various columns and steeples on the line of road, commencing with the monument on Fish-street hill, stopping at Nelson’s Pillar, for the passengers to and from Charing Cross, continuing to the Duke of York’s, and concluding, while Piccadilly is in its present state of blockade, at one of the arches of Hyde Park-corner.
Punch magazine 5th Sept 1846
