Angels Flight Railway - Los Angeles, CA
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Go Boilers!
N 34° 03.065 W 118° 14.994
11S E 384640 N 3768524
The world's shortest incorporated railway.
Waymark Code: WMDT1T
Location: California, United States
Date Posted: 02/21/2012
Views: 15
From Wikipedia:
"Built in 1901 with financing from Colonel J.W. Eddy, as the Los Angeles Incline Railway, Angels Flight began at the west corner of Hill Street at Third and ran for two blocks uphill (northwestward) to its Olive Street terminus. Angels Flight consisted of two vermillion "boarding stations" and two cars, named Sinai and Olivet, pulled up the steep incline by metal cables powered by engines at the upper Olive Street station. As one car ascended, the other descended, carried down by gravity. An archway labeled "Angels Flight" greeted passengers on the Hill Street entrance, and this name became the official name of the railway in 1912 when the Funding Company of California purchased the railway from its founders.
The original Angels Flight was a conventional funicular, with both cars connected to the same haulage cable. Unlike most more modern funiculars it did not have track brakes for use in the event of cable breakage, but it did have a separate safety cable which would come into play in case of breakage of the main cable. It operated for 68 years with a good safety record.
In November 1952, the Beverly Hills Parlor of the Native Daughters of the Golden West erected a plaque to commemorate fifty years of service by the railway.
The plaque reads:
— Built in 1901 by Colonel J.W. Eddy, lawyer, engineer and friend of President Abraham Lincoln, Angels Flight is said to be the world's shortest incorporated railway. The counterbalanced cars, controlled by cables, travel a 33 percent grade for 315 feet. It is estimated that Angels Flight has carried more passengers per mile than any other railway in the world, over a hundred million in its first fifty years. This incline railway is a public utility operating under a franchise granted by the City of Los Angeles. —
In 1962, at its first meeting, the city's new Cultural Heritage Board designated Angels Flight a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument (No. 4), along with four other locations. Los Angeles was early in enacting preservation laws, and the first sites chosen each were "considered threatened to some extent," according to the history of the board, now the Cultural Heritage Commission.
The railway was closed in 1969 when the Bunker Hill area underwent a controversial total redevelopment which destroyed and displaced a community of almost 22,000 working-class families renting rooms in architecturally significant but run-down buildings, to a modern mixed-use district of high-rise commercial buildings and modern apartment and condominium complexes. All the components of Angels Flight were placed in storage in anticipation of the railway's restoration and reopening.
After 27 years in storage, the funicular was rebuilt and reopened on February 24, 1996 a half block south of the original site. Although the original cars, Sinai and Olivet, were used, a new track and haulage system was designed and built, a redesign which had unfortunate consequences five years later. As rebuilt, the funicular was 91 meters (298 feet) long on an approximately 33-percent grade. Car movement was controlled by an operator inside the upper station house, who was responsible for visually determining that the track and vehicles were clear for movement, closing the platform gates, starting the cars moving, monitoring the operation of the funicular cars, observing car stops at both stations, and collecting fares from passengers. The cars themselves did not carry any staff members. Angels Flight was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 13, 2000.
On February 1, 2001, Angels Flight had a serious accident that killed a passenger, Leon Praport age 83, and injured seven others, including Praport's wife, Lola. The accident occurred when car Sinai, approaching the upper station, reversed direction and accelerated downhill in an uncontrolled fashion to strike car Olivet near the lower terminus.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) conducted an investigation into the accident, and determined that the probable cause was the improper design and construction of the Angels Flight funicular drive and the failure of the various regulatory bodies to ensure that the railway system conformed to initial safety design specifications and known funicular safety standards. The NTSB further remarks that the company that designed and built the drive, control, braking, and haul systems, Lift Engineering/Yantrak, is no longer in business, and that the whereabouts of the company's principal is unknown.
Unlike the original, the new funicular used two separate haulage systems (one for each car), with the two systems connected to each other, the drive motor and the service brake by a gear train; it was the failure of this gear train which was the immediate cause of the accident as it effectively disconnected Sinai both from Olivet’s balancing load and from the service brake. There were emergency brakes which acted on the rim of each haulage drum, but due to inadequate maintenance the emergency brakes for both cars were inoperative, which left Sinai without any brakes once its physical connection to the service brake was lost. Contrary to what might be expected, the new funicular was constructed with neither safety cable nor track brakes, either of which would have prevented the accident; the NTSB was unable to identify another funicular worldwide that operated without either of these safety features.
Records indicate that the emergency brake had been inoperative for 17 to 26 months due to the fact that a normally closed hydraulic solenoid valve had been placed in a location where the design called for a normally open valve, and that the regular analysis of oil-samples was discontinued in May 1998, despite the fact that the company performing the tests recommending that the rising particulate level in the oil samples warranted the test occurring more frequently.
During the 17 to 26 months that the emergency braking system was not operating, the braking system was tested daily, but since the service brake and emergency brake were tested simultaneously, there was no way to tell if the emergency brake was functioning without looking at the brake pads or hydraulic pressure gauges during the test. The test was always performed with the Sinai car traveling up-hill, which meant that when the power was cut and the brakes applied (as part of the test), Sinai’s momentum caused the car to continue moving up-hill a short distance (slackening the cable) and then to roll back from gravity, jerking the cable tight.
If the emergency brakes had been functional, then they would have caught Sinai when the cable snapped tight, but without the emergency brakes, the force of the jerk caused by the daily test was directed through the spline (the part that failed) and to the service brake. In addition, it was found that the original design called for the spline to be made of AISI 1018 steel on one drawing, and of AISI 8822 steel on a different drawing, but it is unlikely that this ambiguity in the design contributed to the accident.
Besides the design failures in the haulage system, the system was also criticised by the NTSB for the lack of gates on the cars, and the absence of a parallel walkway for emergency evacuation. The funicular suffered serious damage in the accident.
Interior of the renovated Angels Flight car in March 2010.
On November 1, 2008, both of the repaired and restored Angels Flight cars, Sinai and Olivet, were put back on their tracks and, on January 16, 2009, testing began on the railway. On November 20, 2009, another step in the approval process was achieved. On March 10, 2010, the California Public Utilities Commission approved the safety certificate for the railroad to begin operating again.
The City of Los Angeles commissioned conductor David Woodard to compose and perform a memorial suite, named "An Elegy for Two Angels," to honor Leon Praport and the funicular's quaintly named cars Sinai and Olivet. It was first performed by the 'Los Angeles Chamber Group' in 2001.
Angels Flight reopened to the public for riding on March 15, 2010. The local media covered the event with positive interest. Only a month after re-opening, Angels' Flight had had over 59,000 riders. Today it connects the Historic Core and Broadway commercial district with the hilltop Bunker Hill California Plaza urban park and the Museum of Contemporary Art - MOCA. The cost of a one-way ride is currently 25 cents.
On June 10, 2011, the California Public Utilities Commission ordered Angels Flight to immediately cease operations due to wear on the steel wheels on the two cars. Inspectors determined that their 15-year-old wheels needed replacing. It reopened on July 5, 2011 after eight new custom-made steel wheels were installed on the two cars."
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