Angel’s Flight railway won’t be running again until at least 1996.

When city officials tore down Angel’s Flight in 1969 after 68 years of operation, they promised to restore the beloved funicular railway to its Bunker Hill site in downtown Los Angeles in two years.

The two years dragged into five, then another five. Finally, there was a commitment to make it part of the Bunker Hill redevelopment project. The railway’s two old wooden cars, Olivet and Sinai, sat rotting in a warehouse, forcing officials to announce that they would be replaced with replicas when the reborn Angel’s Flight finally got off the ground.

But don’t run out to get a ride. Angel’s Flight has been pushed to the last phase of Bunker Hill rebuilding, which is not scheduled to begin until 1993, Community Redevelopment Agency officials said. And the bells of the railway, which carried more than 100 million passengers up and down Bunker Hill beside the 3rd Street tunnel between Hill and Olivestreets, won’t be clanging again until at least 1996.

Angel’s Flight will be part of California Plaza, a billion-dollar residential and business project slated for 11 acres of the Bunker Hill project.

The railway, which will be relocated to half a block south of the old site, will be wedged between the already completed Angelus Plaza senior citizens housing project, an outdoor theater and three glass-and-steel office towers.

The hillside today looks a lot different from the way it did when the old orange-and-black cars first screeched their way to fame amid the turn-of-the-century Victorian mansions that graced the hillside.

It was Col. J. W. Eddy, a one-time schoolteacher and legislator who got the idea that it would be easier to transport people up the hill by train rather than by horse and buggy. At the time the area was prosperous but it later declined--its mansions became rooming houses, and the commuters who once parked at the top of the hill and rode the funiculars to their jobs below found easier ways to get to work.

The Los Angeles Heritage Board in 1962 made Angel’s Flight part of its first public proclamation. Five years later, the railway was razed as part of the Bunker Hill slum clearance project.

By the time the railway was dismantled, the colorful cars had traveled an estimated 15.6 million miles. The original cars once made 400 trips a day up and down the hill, seven days a week from 6 a.m. to 12:20 a.m.

Olivet and Sinai will be restored at a cost of $300,000 each. While the Redevelopment Agency will retain ownership, one car will be placed at the planned Angel’s Flight Museum at California Plaza and the other at Heritage Square, a Victorian village north of downtown.

Cost of the new Angel’s Flight was estimated at $2 million five years ago, but new projections have not been made, pending design changes, officials said. California Plaza will design and build the new railway.

The railway will probably feature the old arch that marked the lower entrance at Hill Street, and the tracks will feature wooden ties to add authenticity, according to Yukio Kawaratani, Bunker Hill principal planner. The railway itself will be on a 27-degree grade, not the 33 degrees of the original, and the new line will be about 300 feet long, about 25 feet shorter than the original.

One item that will not be reproduced, however, is the cost of the ride on the railway. No one yet knows what the price will be, but they are certain it won’t be the 5 cents--or six rides for a quarter--that riders used to pay.