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Skilifts.org
Has a sizable photograph collection of lifts, mostly from the United States. Had its heyday in the first decade of the 2000's. While the website is dormant, it transitioned to the niche of the forum and industry (SORT) as other resources with pictures expanded.
Liftblog
By far the most comprehensive collection of lift photos from the United States and probably soon Canada as well. Run by Peter Landsman with lots of engagement from the community. Most of us are probably pretty familiar. Wonderful all around resource that only seems to get better and better.
Remontees-Mecaniques.net
French non-profit website with a database of 7,640 detailed lift photo-documentaries or reports from 65 countries. Very active community and 600 new reports were produced in 2020 alone by 38 authors with 8 authors contributing at least 25 reports. The true database is very intuitive with the ability to sort by year built, manufacturer, lift type, and a number of other fields that each report has. 167 manufacturers are present. The top 6 countries for reports are France 2,523; United States 914; Austria 836; Switzerland 726; Italy 454; Canada 374. Probably the best source for Asian and South American lifts as well as tourist and urban lifts. It can be difficult for new people to contribute given the learning curve of producing a good report as well as the time required, but I am happy to help anyone! They are happy to translate to French so no knowledge of French is required. This has been my home since 2012 and I've picked up the basics of the language, but that's it.
Lift-World
German website that has been natively translated into English and four other languages. I'd say this is the most comparable website to Skilifts.org. A little bit like Wikipedia because anyone can contribute photos and edit the database, but everything gets reviewed. It has a true database that as of now includes 20,717 lifts around the world which is more than any other site. A large majority of them don't have pictures but many do. Engagement has perhaps been waning a bit, but experienced in uptick during the pandemic and the site is very much alive. Database and interface is a bit clunky, but they have a volunteer developer who very gradually makes improvements and some big plans are in the works. For my own experience, I have been making a variety of contributions over the past month that typically go live within a day or two. For lifts already in the database, it is possible to add photos right away. For lifts not in the database, it is possible to add places, ski resorts, and ski lifts combined in one big swoop, but then you have to wait for them to be approved before adding photos. I definitely hope to contribute much more here in the future. The German-speaking forum can be found at a specific section of Alpinforum. They might speak English as well, but it would probably be good form to use a translator in addition to using English.
Chairlift.org
Great source for vintage lift photographs, mostly in the United States. Venerable website that isn't updated often anymore, but we hope it sticks around.
NewEnglandSkiHistory
Colorado Ski History
Dormant website that has lots of lift photos from Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming. Many of the lifts have been replaced. Click on "Resort Pictures" instead of "Ski Lifts."
Skiingbc.info
Great resource for ski lifts in British Columbia and Alberta including smaller ski areas. Hasn't been updated since 2008.
The Gondola Project
Blog that also has maps and lifts of urban and public transport ropeways. Lately has been dormant other than weekly news roundups.
Information Center for Ropeway Studies - General information about the Ropeway Center at the Colorado School of Mines. Includes online database of all of the material that is in there.
Mountain Scholar - Online database of images from the Ropeway Center collection. Images of a lot of older lifts can be found here, most taken by Chuck Dwyer.
Bergbahnen
Great German-speaking resource for over 5,000 lifts in Switzerland and Germany. I'm not too familiar, but it seems like a good resource.
http://www.lanove-drahy.cz/
Very good website on lifts in the Czech Republic. I believe the list of lifts is comprehensive for their country and most lifts have photos.
Australian Mountains
Good list of lifts in Australia with detailed stats. Not many pictures.
Funivie.org
The top Italian ski lift site. Has a very active community, but lacks any sort of ski lift database with photos.
tunawatari21
Japanese ski lift blog. Posts about 1-2 times weekly.
http://cable.cocolog-nifty.com/
Japanese ski lift blog that hasn't been updated in a few years.
Cableman
Japanese database of aerial trams and gondolas (not chairlifts and smaller lifts). Just information, not photos.
seilbahnbilder.ch
Swiss website I don't know much about.
Lost Ropeways
German website I don't know much about.
World Aerial Ropeways map
Not a website, but I believe it to be the largest map of non-skiing lifts in existence. I've put it together over the last 6-8 years or so and I and at least one other person have used it to make trips.
Let me know of any I forgot!
This post has been edited by Conrad: 17 July 2023 - 06:36 AM
