It has been six-and-a-half years since the Angels Flight collision that, with the snap of a cable, bad brakes and a fatal touch of irony, Survivor Leon Praport’s life was ended violently.
It was round noon, and I was at the Market on Hill beneath 3rd. I was having at a heavy piece of pizza, scowling at the sawdust laid down for equal parts nostalgia and vomitorium, when the “THRUMP” from without washed through the feasting area. I was slower than usual to respond to the noise despite not finishing the thick slab of cheese and cheap bread, but I did manage to capture some decent wide shots of the collision of the two cars on Angels Flight.
I was unaware that there was a small, elderly man crushed between the two funicular vehicles; there were also a few folk injured, among them the wife of the deceased.
The dead man, Leon Praport, was a Survivor replete with the numbers on his forearm. Despite having survived the cattle car carnage of the Holocaust of Nazi Germany, Mr. Praport had died on the shortest railway in the world, on a car called “Sinai” no less. (The other is named Olivet.)
The months that followed were terse with finger-pointing between the California Public Utilities Commission and Angels Flight owners. Before the end of the year, L.A. Downtown News was running an ad announcing the re-opening of Angels Flight for late 2001. Toward the end of 2001, the ad copy changed to Spring of 2002; by early 2002 it was some later date. I imagine the ad stopped running shortly thereafter.
The occasional bit of filler in neighbourhood newspapers was all that was granted the still-stark strips of iron that uselessly connect Bunker Hill and the lowlands. But the cars are being prepped for what may well be a return to duty. The rail yards beneath the 4th Street bridge are the current home of the uncrunched and freshly painted cars, as-yet-connected parts and a possibly fresh coil of bloodless cable.
The Olivet and the Sinai in the yards on the L.A. River under 4th Street.
Could this be the coil of cable that killed Leon Praport, an adder ready to strike another victim?
In the meantime, be sure to keep an eye out for the Muerta PSA titled “The Fatal Irony of Angels Flight,” which are available exclusively to the occasional straphanger who happens to find them on public transit throughout Los Angeles.
-BusTard
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