> The evidence confirms that the emergency system installed in the flywheel located at the top of Calçada da Glória, tripping the power switch to the cabins in the event of a loss of cable tension, worked as intended, which would result in the immediate and automatic application of the pneumatic brake in each cabin.

> At this time, it has not yet been possible to conduct verification checks to confirm whether the system for automatically applying the pneumatic brake to the cabins following a loss of cable tension in the trambolho worked.

The cable breaking (or in this case, going loose at its attachment point) should be the detected at the flywheel area at the top, and result in power being cut to both cabins — this happened. This should result in pneumatic brakes being applied at the maximum force — it's unknown whether this worked.

> However, regardless of this, the evidence indicates that the air brake and the manual brake were quickly applied by the brakeman of cab #1, but that in the current configuration, the brakes do not have sufficient capacity to stop the cabins in motion without their empty masses being mutually balanced by the connecting cable. Therefore, the existing brakes does not constitute a redundant system in case of a failure in the connecting cable.

Irrespective of the automatic system, the brakeman immediately applied the air brake and manual brake. Then: in this configuration the brakes are not sufficient and are not a redundant system.

One possible interpretation is that the brakes when manually applied are insufficient to stop the vehicle when the counterweight provided by the cable is absent.

Another is that the manual brake is insufficient, but the pneumatic/air (assuming those are the same) brake should be at maximum force, but for some reason, it wasn't applied at maximum force by either the brakeman or the automatic system.

I disagree. The last sentence kinda strongly implies that there was no redundancy:

"the existing brakes does not constitute a redundant system"

Or from the Portuguese report:

  Desta forma, não constitui um sistema redundante à falha dessa ligação

  Therefore, it does not constitute a redundant system in the event of this connection failing.

It turns out that the brakes were critical and they didn't work for whatever reason (design or maintenance or operation or unforseen failure)

>By mentioning "current configuration" the report is implying that the brakes were not applied fully, and the reason for this is still being investigated

Thank you for clarifying since the brakes never being able to stop a high up car is an alarming design. It does make me imagine the reason for this failure will be some horrificly implemented operational process.

> it is known they would never be enough.

No that's not what it says. Brakes were not enough "in the current configuration" in other words they were not applied fully. The investigation will focus on why brakes were not applying full breaking force.

In railway jargon "brake configuration" refers to "how much are you braking" but you seem to have interpreted "braking configuration" as "the number and type of brakes that are currently installed in the vehicle"

Yes, as a Portuguese with some patriotic feelings (but also self critical when needed), I was impressed myself with the quality of this report given the time frame.

Tough to avoid for a budget limited run tv series. Fixing that would be expensive detail special fx for no value (maybe easy to clean up now with ai for a few hundred dollars)

You're welcome. :)

Most people here have exactly the same view you expressed. My initial reaction was the same as well. Then, on top of it all there's the political noise where each party is now trying to take some advantage out of the situation, which isn't pretty. Besides, we both know well how things usually happen here, so it's only human to think there was some kind of gross mistake. I want to believe it wasn't the case this time, but who knows... We will have to wait and see.