The Mount Lowe Railway

We arrived! This was the end of the line for the funicular portion of the Mt. Lowe Railway. This incredible feat of engineering ran from 1893 to 1938. It was a must see and must travel destination in Southern California. Very little remains today, and what does was brought back by the Mount Lowe Preservation Society.Like this massive Wheel that pulled the funicular cars up and down the very steep hill.That is the haulage cable, and you wonder why I can’t get enough of this man made steel.A thing of beauty.From here, a conventional railway continued up to the summit of Mount Lowe.

Ascending 3250 ft, at some points as steep as 62 grade. In contrast Angels Flight which only has a 33 percent grade and is only 315 ft. long.The top of the tramway, from here one would switch to an electric cable car.  Notice how there is a sudden drop off?Looking down at the concrete pilings that held the funicular tracks.An old photo of the funicular  arriving at Echo Mountain House, a 70 room hotel.  No way could anyone build this today,  those men just standing on the front of the car with no security measures?!?!  Those were very different times.Another very famous image, after leaving the hotel, an electric car took you to the top of Mount Lowe. And no, I wasn’t going to hike another 5 miles up there.Very little remains of the hotel today. Weather, flooding and a drop in profitability closed down the railway in 1938.  Some of it was salvaged and sold, some simply stolen by scavengers.  Unfortunately the Forrest service finds old structures to be a nuisance. They have no sense of history and whenever possible they simply destroy standing structures.  My guess is they fear law suits. So very little remains of the hotel, just the foundations. Notice the large circular structure?That was a natural gas tank, when the hotel was built, the gas was used for everything. A short while later an electric line connected the hotel to Alta Dena bellow. I’m glad that the preservation society is keeping on top of the graffiti. Have I said how much I hate graffiti?!  No one has the right to desecrate either public or private property. Either buy a building, or work on a canvas – I don’t care that the tagger calls it ‘art’ – it isn’t.Luckily some structures are too difficult to remove, here is the stairway from the station up into the hotel.A beautiful stone wall. Kudos to all the workmen who hauled up the materials and built these walls and the buildings that no longer exist.How cool is this, we are on Echo Mountain after all, the preservation society has reinstalled one of these echo phone (love the name). There may have been more to it in the old days, I tried and I heard no echo, maybe I can blame it on the fog.