Funiculars Still Ply Local Hills

If you are rich, but your legs are weary; if your home is perched high on a hill, but your garage is down below; if you don’t feel compelled to climb every mountain, you may have traveled on a rare contraption that most of us have trouble pronouncing.

Call them funiculars, hillevators or hillevettes. Call them by their boring, regulatory name: incline elevators. What all these quirky mechanisms have in common is that they offer Southern Californians and all their baggage an easy way to climb up a steep hill.

From Holmby Hills to Malibu and up the northern coast, as many as 200 pricey, personal hillside trams--a distant cousin to the historic Angels Flight--serve homeowners who don’t want to climb up their long outdoor staircases.

Some are modest, with passenger cars enclosed with wire mesh. Others are more ornate, built with redwood and covered with canopies.

And, at least two other large funiculars that can carry golf carts or a crowd of people operate locally. One tugs golfers and their carts 430 feet up a hill to a clubhouse at the top of the Sheraton Industry Hills Resort and Conference Center, which includes a 36-hole public golf course. The other is a Magic Mountain attraction called the Orient Express, which carries visitors up to a higher level of the park.

The accident last week on Angeles Flight, which killed one man and injured seven other passengers, prompted the management of the Sheraton funicular to temporarily shut down its rail cars as a precaution.

“We put it down out of respect and to show that safety is our concern,” said Scott Huntsman, resort manager. “Our engineers said it is in top working condition, but we want to check and double-check.”

Golfers, who were forced Saturday to drive their carts up a hillside road, said they missed the peaceful ride, during which the red tile roofs of the San Gabriel Valley shrink in the distance.

“It’s a good time to think about your game, to add up your score. Hopefully, you won’t jump off after you do,” said Betsy Gretton.

Like Angels Flight, one car goes up as another comes down, each holding up to six golf carts and their occupants.

Magic Mountain officials said they have kept their funicular open.

State officials who annually inspect those two funiculars said there have been no reports of injury or serious breakdowns.

Funiculars dotted the region’s hillsides and mountains more than a century ago. Remnants of the Mt. Lowe Railway still cling to the San Gabriel Mountains. There was Court Flight Incline Railway, which served the upper class in Bunker Hill. The Mount Washington Railway of 1909 helped make the area a popular place to live. In the 1920s, two Santa Catalina Island funiculars carried visitors up and down seaside hills.

Today, much like Angels Flight, funiculars are used more for their entertainment value than as a serious mode of transportation.

“It’s not fast; it’s just kind of fun. It’s one of those things you like to say you did,” said John Semcken, part owner of the Industry Hills resort. “But it’s something unique about our facility.”

These days, public funiculars have been largely replaced by private hillevators. Those who desire a $30,000-to-$200,000 automated ride up to their front door, guest house or tennis court buy a customized model--a mechanical cross between an elevator and a funicular.

The unofficial hillevator capital of Southern California--home to six of the unusual contraptions--is along Coastline Drive in Malibu.

Most of the electric machines typically climb about 70 feet and can carry three people or 400 pounds.

The engine hums and the car shakes a bit as a wire cable pulls the cars guided on a track ever so slowly up the hill.

“Sometimes it’s faster to take the stairs if you’re in good shape,” confided Gertrude Pasternick, owner of a Coastline Drive apartment complex, as she and a visitor inched up the slope. “But sometimes people need help with groceries, so they use it then.”

Pasternick said she was not worried about the safety of her own hillside climber because she has it inspected once a month and there has never been an accident on it.

Other residents expressed confidence in their machines.

“[Hillevators] are a way of life. I can carry about two grocery bags but that’s my limit,” said 76-year-old Antoinette Sars, who lives several doors down from Pasternick’s building. She has had to make do with the stairs since her hillevator broke about a month ago.

“A lot of people count on it; they keep asking when it’s going to be repaired,” she said.

Though many residents take the hillevators for granted, they are a welcome novelty to outsiders.

Contractor Rudy Makoul spent two days with his crew doing roof repairs on a Coastline Drive condo. He figures the convenient hillevator shaved a day and a half of work off the job.

Saves a Lot of Lugging

As he unloaded more than 100 pounds of building materials from the small cage, worker Miguel Sepeda commented: “It took five minutes to get down here. Without this, it would have taken one and a half, two hours.”

The Malibu hillevators are some of the best-known among the unusual fraternity of those who build and repair them, but there are other notable machines, say real estate agents and repairmen.

The Chemosphere House hillevator in the Hollywood Hills is one. The machine and its enclosed cab climb 100 feet to the futuristic 2,200-square-foot home designed by architect John Lautner.

New York developer Joel Schur built a $200,000 hillevator in 1985 to bring guests and supplies to a home and tennis court set in a 300-foot-deep gorge. The property has since changed ownership.

The state Elevator, Ride and Tramway Unit of Cal/OSHA regulates hillevators, which must undergo annual $110 inspections. Unit spokesman Dean Fryer said he is not aware of any serious accidents involving injuries, but such reports are not required by the state.

Al Vershell and Ed Miller are two local experts on incline elevators. Vershell wants it known that he was the one who came up with the names hillevator and, for smaller models, hillevette--terms that are now part of the popular lingo among the incline elevator set.

Miller, an elevator repairman who grew weary of working in dark shafts, decided to specialize in hillevator repairs to get outdoors. He’s proud of a career record that includes work on “at least 90%” of the hillevators around town. They are owned, he said, mainly by the rich and famous--so famous that he is sworn to secrecy. (Think Hollywood titans.)

“The reason people live in nice homes on a mountain is that they want privacy,” he said.

He said clients also include retired folks, who once could sprint up the stairs, but now need a lift.

“It’s helpful for older people and visitors with suitcases,” said Sars, who has lived in a Coastline Drive building since 1973. “At first, it felt strange because it’s not like an elevator and feels shaky, but you get used to it.”

Lest there be confusion over the differences between a hillevator and a funicular, Vershell, the incline purist, can set the record straight:

A funicular basically uses two cars counterbalancing each other on tracks with a single drive machine. A hillevator commonly uses one car on a guide track with a drive machine doing all the work.

“The similarity,” he said, “is that they both operate on an incline. They are not exactly rare machines, but you have to have a lot of money to afford it.”