Week 6: Riding the (World's Shortest) Rails

On Saturday afternoon, Tom and I headed downtown to tackle this week's new thing, taking a ride on Angels Flight. This is also on my L.A. To-Do List (on which I have made quite a bit of progress, I must say), so...bonus. Angels Flight is, at 315 feet, the world's shortest railway, and a one-way ticket costs 25 cents. It's a little bit of random, weird, and wonderful in the middle of Los Angeles. Going on silly adventures like this is one of my favorite things to do.

 

 A little background - Angels Flight was built in 1901 to ferry the wealthy residents of Bunker Hill up the steep slope between Hill and Olive streets. According to the plaque at the top of the hill, Angels Flight has carried more passengers per mile than any other railway in the world, over 100 million in its first fifty years in operation. So, basically, Angels Flight is breaking records left and right.

{Angels Flight in 1905, a block north of where it currently lives - photo courtesy of LAPL Photo Database}

Fair warning, I documented what is approximately a 60-second ride with at least that many pictures. Here are a few more...

Across the street from Angels Flight is Grand Central Market, another stop on my path to becoming an L.A. Woman, so after we rode the mini-rail up and down, we took a quick tour through the market.

Now we know where to pick up Mexican spices...

Some sort of dried fish product...

And gifts for the Baby Jesus...