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Angels Flight Opening: Looking Like Next Year

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It was about a month ago that Olivet and Sinai, the two Angles Flights railway cars were returned to Bunker Hill as part of another phase of repairs for the ride, which has been closed since a fatal 2001 accident. There was chatter that this could thing could open by the end of the year, so we asked John Welborne, president of the Angels Flight Railway Foundation, for an update on the status of the project. Christmas miracle? Let's skip to the end of his email: "Bottom line: Bits of work, perhaps visible out on the tracks, will take place here on Bunker Hill between now and Christmas / New Year’s. Then -- we hope -- in the first couple of weeks of January, there will be some more active and obvious testing and fine-tuning of Olivet and Sinai taking place out on the tracks. At that point, perhaps we can predict a time to say “come on down (or up)!”

Welborne writes: "What I heard from the Drive and Control System vendors last week is that they “hope to finish up final installation detail work after the holidays.” That means, I assume, that we shall have testing and inspections soon after the vendors do finish up that final work. I’ll certainly let you know when we know more. The current “good news” is that major warranty work on one component was completed over the past four days (involving three people flying into town and moving a 2,500-pound piece of machinery back and forth to Monrovia on Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday).

We also hope to be completing some local work on the cable rollers in the coming weeks – while the Drive and Control System vendors (who do lots of ski country work at this time of year) apparently are working on their other installations ‘before the holidays.”

Bottom line: Bits of work, perhaps visible out on the tracks, will take place here on Bunker Hill between now and Christmas / New Year’s. Then -- we hope -- in the first couple of weeks of January, there will be some more active and obvious testing and fine-tuning of Olivet and Sinai taking place out on the tracks. At that point, perhaps we can predict a time to say “come on down (or up)!”