This is Angels Flight, a little funicular in the Bunker Hill neighborhood of downtown Los Angeles. It is a marvelous story of how engineering has advanced over the past century.
The railway was first built around 1900 or so and ran for 70 years without any real incidents. Then it was torn down. But everybody missed it, so a few decades later it was rebuilt in a slightly different location. It promptly slipped its brakes and killed a tourist.
It was shut down for a full decade before finally being reopened. It promptly derailed, though this time no one was killed. So it was shut down again. Four years later it was finally reopened.
To add insult to injury, the two cars, Sinai and Olivet, which are now 120 years old, have performed flawlessly the entire time. The failures have been solely due to the parts of the railway that were built by modern engineering firms. Progress!
Cool picture, and cool story. I took Angel's Flight in 2018 when I visited LA (I was staying right near by), not realizing that it had a treacherous recent past.
It also features prominently in HBO's Perry Mason prequel from last year.
It's definitely NOT on the right track
So we should all rail against it.
I think we've been taken for a ride
(groan)
Build it to last or build it to last until the check clears....
Tail Light Guarantee!!!
Sort of like the Chinese steel that was used in the bay bridge repair???
I rode it back in the late 1950s. It cost a nickle.
As well as HBO's Perry Mason, it was also featured in one of the Harry Bosch novels and the Amazon Prime series of the same character.
Wow! Thanks for the bacstory, Mr Drum. I recall it from Perry Mason: the Beginnings, where it played a crucial role in the plot. Always wondered what that thing was, and that it wasn't in San Francisco.
Second System Effect.
So, is this that high speed rail system to no where that Kevin writes about?
It is emblematic for the history of American rail roads. In the 1950 or so America had a magnificent railroad system. They neglected it until it was gone while other countries kept theirs going.
Then a rail road renaissance occurred starting in Japan and Franc. It spread across the world. America kept sleeping right through it. And here we are.
This analysis appears to be somewhat unfair.
The system that was created in 1901 was a "standard" funicular, based on two cars connected by a common cable, such that their two weights counterbalanced each other. Easier to design, build, manage; more or less "inherently" safe.
The new system was not created as an engineering project on engineering grounds, it was created as nostalgia project on grounds of "let's make something that looks like the old one, even though the building conditions into which the new one was being slotted no longer exactly matched the prior conditions. This meant the new system had to have a new design (independent rather than counter-balanced cars) and safety features appropriate for the new design (for example end gates) were explicitly vetoed by "the community" on grounds that they were not an accurate historical reconstruction.
Now clearly it's an engineering failure that the new system misfunctioned, and we understand the engineering failures that led to this, in particular the breaking system; but that is NOT the same thing as saying "we can't do now what we could do so well in 1901".
It's quite likely that if asked to build EXACTLY the same system as 1901, we could do so just fine.
Conversely, if asked to build a new system from scratch we could do so just fine.
Where things get sticky is when those in control know nothing of engineering, assume it is some sort of magic, and insist that engineers square the circle, creating something that looks and behaves exactly like an entity created under different very engineering conditions. Essentially "make me a plane, but I want it to look and behave like a boat".
So yes, there is a lesson here. But I don't think it's the lesson Kevin draws...
If you want to know more, the whole sorry story is available in
https://web.archive.org/web/20111022062451/https://www.ntsb.gov/doclib/reports/2003/RAR0303.pdf
I read the NTSB report; at https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/RAR0303.pdf
The historical preservation commission takes the blame for the lack of end gates (which led to a passenger being ejected in the crash), and the omission of a walkway (which hampered evacuation of the injured and other passengers). But the accident almost certainly would never have occurred if the cars had been fitted with track brakes; or if a safety cable which the 1900 system had had been designed in. The historical-accuracy folks had nothing to do with either omission. There were multiple instances of incorrect engineering analyses, wrong assumptions, and inadequate management of the design process with regard to safety. No one was asked to do the impossible.
Of particular interest to me were the recommendations of the subcontractor Yantrak, whose experience was mainly in airport trams. I’m an engineering psychologist, and it seems to me that Yantrak’s engineers had an inappropriate mental model of the system they were asked to design. One need not be an engineer to notice that a funicular resembles an elevator at least as much as it does an airport tram*, but Yantrak doesn’t seem to have grasped that. And no one designs elevators without one of the safety features that were both omitted by Yantrak, and ultimately accepted by other parties.
*There are a few airports that aren’t on level ground, e.g. Courchevel, but they aren’t big enough to need tramways.
I'm interested less in assigning blame than in Kevin's point about "we can't do engineering properly any more".
As with any complex failure, ten things had to go wrong and saying "the guy who caused item six is THE cause of the failure" is a political claim, not an ontological claim.
To me it seems that, as I said, there was an insistence on recreating something under inappropriate circumstances and, insofar as everything stems from one fault, it stems from that.
As the *engineering* original sin, the problem appears to be that the second version was supposed to *look* like a funicular but could not be built as one (as you say, built as an elevator with elevator type designs). I could not find anything *definitive* as to why a counter-balanced elevator-style design could not be built but, reading through the lines, the impression I get is that the built environment no longer allowed such a design.
I'd love to hear correction on that, but if we stipulate that, I think my point stands -- the ultimate problem was nostalgia leading to an insistence on recreation of a design inappropriate to the new realities of the environment in which it was placed.
From there we get subsequent failure cascade -- contractors with an inappropriate mental model of the task (because the underlying deign was inappropriate), safety features inappropriate to the design (because "the community" saw something that looked like the old funicular so assumed it worked the same way with the same failure modes), etc.
If Kevin thinks that there was a golden age of engineering in the past, I disagree. I also disagree with your contention that the engineering failures followed from the initial decision to preserve the historical appearance of the funicular. The NTSB findings supply evidence that it was entirely possible to build a safe system within the constraints given.
I can’t agree to stipulate that a conventional funicular single-cable design was infeasible. If anything, the classic design is more compact and has fewer losses than the newer design; it would seem to be easier to fit into a limited space, if that was an issue.
In any case, the dual-drum design was and is compatible with either track brakes or a safety cable, the two safety mechanisms that were omitted in the reconstruction.
The engineering team could have ensured that the hub was heat-treated to a similar hardness as the splined shaft to which it was mated; could have designed the two braking systems to be capable of being tested independently; could have defined a program of periodic inspections, tests and maintenance to verify and ensure safe operation; could have analyzed the rate of metal-particle accumulation in the oil system and calculated wear rates and teardown intervals. All of those choices were entirely theirs to make. There is nothing in the record that suggests that they would have done any better if they could have designed a system ‘from scratch’. They were not following best practices, and I note that Yantrak and its parent have since gone out of business.
Also
http://www.ladowntownnews.com/news/no-angelhow-did-an-engineer-with-a-history-of-fatal-accidents-get-hired-to-build/article_8a5b9a53-8c94-5cc5-9ece-be80c22af613.html