In reply to Neil Anderson:
Disclosure: I don't ski.
It seemed to me that what did for the ski lift was cheap travel to destinations with better snow/weather and infrastructure for skiers, combined with less predictable snow/weather in the Cairngorms and limited interest from non-skier tourists.
As for the funicular, there just doesn't seem to have been enough people interested in using it multiple times. What was probably once a novel concept up to the 70s (Go up a mountain! On a train! Eat food in a cafe! There might be a view!) seems a bit meh now in the era of instagram-driven tourism.
So I don't believe the conspiracy theories presented in the article. I get that a relatively small subset of skiers liked the place, and it provided valuable local employment, but these things don't have a right to exist forever. I think its time to accept that things change, its a national park now, and leaving a load of defunct infrastructure in-place is inappropriate. Remove it and let the mountain revert to a wilder state. Create businesses and employment that work in sympathy with that.
Anyway, just my thoughts.
Post edited at 12:06