In 1901, Los Angeles opened Angels Flight up a 33% Bunker Hill slope; by 1952, the short railway was credited with more than 100 million passengers

Every day, people in downtown Los Angeles step into a tiny orange train car, ride for less than a minute, and pop out at the top or bottom of a steep hill called Bunker Hill. This is Angels Flight, reputedly the world's shortest railroad. The National Register of Historic Places nomination for the site says the funicular opened on December 31, 1901, and was built by Civil War veteran Colonel J.W. Eddy. It has since been torn down, stored for 27 years, suffered a fatal accident, and opened and closed several times. And it's still going, more than 120 years later.

A colonel's 120-day railway

Eddy did not waste time. City Council records, cited in the National Register nomination, show that he received permission to build the line in May 1901, broke ground that August, and opened it to the public by New Year's Eve. On opening day, more than 2,000 people rode between Hill and Olive Streets. The railroad ran along the old Third Street Tunnel, carrying Bunker Hill residents, then a wealthy neighborhood of Victorian mansions, to and from the center of the city.

The original track was about 315 feet, according to the historic marker at the site. When the railroad was rebuilt half a block south in 1996, the new track was a little shorter, 298 feet, which is its length today. Either way, the climb has always been steep: 33 percent grade, gaining some 96 feet in elevation in that short stretch.

Two cars, one cable, and a neat trick

Angels Flight is based on a simple idea. Two cars, named Olivet and Sinai, sit on the same cable. As one car goes up, the other comes down. Each car's weight helps pull the other. This is called counterbalancing and is what makes funiculars like this one work so well on steep ground. The National Register nomination says the current cars themselves are largely the same physical vehicles built during a 1905 rebuild, meaning they are well over a century old. It was the mechanical drive and safety systems, not the car bodies, that were later rebuilt after the 2001 accident. The little railroad also changed hands often in its early years, passing through a series of private companies and engineers before the city took it over in 1962.

Torn down, packed away and almost lost

Angels Flight’s history hasn’t been smooth. In 1969, the city of Los Angeles tore down most of old Bunker Hill to redevelop it, and the railroad went with it. Its two cars were taken to a warehouse and sat there for 27 years. It took a preservationist campaign that included the Los Angeles Conservancy to save it. As the Los Angeles Conservancy explains, the railroad was eventually reopened in 1996, close to its original location.

Drama didn’t end there. A mechanical failure in 2001 sent one car into the other, killing a passenger and injuring several more. The Conservancy notes that the drive system was rebuilt over nine years and the railroad was reopened in 2010. It closed again following a minor derailment in 2013 and only reopened in 2017, this time with new safety brakes and a walkway alongside the track for emergencies.

A hundred million rides and counting

Angels Flight has long been famous for the amount of use it receives on such a short stretch of track. The Native Daughters of the Golden West, a civic group, put up a plaque celebrating the line for the 50th anniversary of the railroad in 1952. According to the Historical Marker Database, the plaque read that Angels Flight had more riders per mile than any other railroad in the world and estimated that in its first 50 years, the funicular had carried more than 100 million riders. That figure is through 1952 only. And with over seven decades of service since then, including its busiest years as a tourist and commuter route, the real lifetime ridership is almost certainly higher, but no official tally has been kept since then.

Why this tiny railway still counts

Angels Flight is barely a football field long and yet it has survived the mansions, streetcars and neighborhoods that once encircled it. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000, and remains a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument. In a city often criticized for erasing its own history, Angels Flight shows that some things are worth rebuilding, over and over, one short, steep ride at a time.