Return Flight : Work Begins on Reconstructing Historic Angels Flight Railway

After sitting in storage for more than 22 years, the historic Angels Flight railway was on the move again Thursday in downtown Los Angeles.

Workers returned the funicular’s station house and landmark archway to a vacant lot at the corner of 4th and Hill streets in preparation for the reconstruction of the tiny incline railway next year.

Once a new 315-foot track system is installed, passengers could be riding up and down Bunker Hill in the slanting cable cars that carried more than 100 million riders between 1901 and 1969.

Officials said they hope to decide within two months whether the original wooden Angels Flight cars--named “Olivet” and “Sinai”--can be upgraded and returned to service. If not, identical-looking steel cars will be built and the originals put on display.

“We’re hoping it will be running by late 1992 or early 1993,” said Jeffrey Skorneck, Bunker Hill project manager for the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency.

Called “the world’s shortest railway,” Angels Flight connected the downtown business district with a swanky residential neighborhood atop Bunker Hill when it was constructed on the steep, 33% slope between Hill and Olive streets at the turn of the century.

But ridership had slipped by 1962, when the CRA purchased the railway for $35,000. The hilltop mansions had become seedy rooming houses, and officials earmarked Bunker Hill as the site of new high-rise office, residential and cultural projects.

When Angels Flight was dismantled in 1969, officials promised that it would be rebuilt next to the 3rd Street tunnel in two years. Later, restoration was postponed until 1975, then until 1981, and then indefinitely.

CRA officials said Thursday that the return of Angels Flight has until now been tied to the construction of the third phase of the California Plaza high-rise project--a proposed $300-million development at the corner of Hill and 4th streets.

Agency leaders said the city decided to move ahead with the restoration because the sluggish economy and soft downtown real estate market has indefinitely delayed the plaza project. If the high-rise construction begins after the incline railway is built, the tracks will again be temporarily removed to make room for construction equipment, officials said.

The railway restoration is expected to cost about $3 million, part of which will be paid by the consortium that is developing the $1.2-billion California Plaza project, according to Skorneck. His agency will ask the City Council for final approval in about two months, he said.

Officials predicted that the funicular will help link the downtown shopping district with the city’s glitzy new high-rise business district.

But even against the glossy marble-and-glass skyscraper backdrop, Angels Flight will be a standout, chief restorer William Ellinger pledged Thursday.

The two cars that will be alternately pulled and lowered along the track will be painted in their original Halloween orange and black, said Ellinger, a Pasadena-based restoration architect. So will the 21-foot-tall archway that will anchor the bottom of the incline and the columned station house that will be placed on the plaza at the top of the hill.

Officials said they originally feared that new cars would have to be built because the new track site--several hundred feet south of the original one--is on a more gentle slope. But Ellinger said California Plaza builders have built a pad at the top of the hill that will allow the tracks to duplicate the old 33% grade.

The old 16-seat cars will be usable if their wooden undercarriages can be replaced by steel and if the city is willing to waive such modern-day requirements as wheelchair access, said Dennis Luna, a CRA commissioner who remembers traveling on the old cars as a child.

“I’d like to see the old ones restored and used,” said Luna, a lawyer. “They were great to ride. When I was a kid I’d sit in the front so it would look like the two cars were going to crash when they met each other midway. Of course, they’d swing by each other. It was great.”

Thursday’s return of the faded station house and archway drew hundreds of onlookers.

“I’m tickled to death somebody had the foresight to save this,” said downtown worker Gail Monahan of Pasadena.

Harry Hirakawa, a county worker who also remembers riding Angels Flight as a child, predicted it will be a hit with high-rise workers and with residents of Bunker Hill’s apartments and condominiums. Rides on the new line are expected to cost 50 cents, up from the nickel-a-trip fare of 1969.

“The old-timers will certainly want to ride it,” said Hirakawa, of Rosemead.

Building mover Delbert Reed, who hauled the original Angels Flight off to a Gardena storage yard in 1969, was back Thursday to supervise the return. He said the homecoming was sweeter than its farewell.

“There’s a lot more interest today than back then,” he said, surveying the knots of onlookers on the Hill Street sidewalk. “I don’t remember even a handful of people watching in ’69.”