LOS ANGELES, Sept. 7 (Xinhua) -- A historic tiny incline railway called Angeles Flight, in the western U.S. city of Los Angeles, reopened to the public service on Thursday after a 3-day closure.
Angeles Flight is back "following the completion of daylight-required maintenance," according to a statement on the Angeles Flight's official website.
The 116-year-old funicular was closed on Monday, only four days after its reopening ceremony following an almost four-year closure. It reopened on August 31 after a 5 million-U.S.-dollar full-scale modernization.
"Due to the extreme heat of the last few days, there's been some contraction and expansion that happens in the bottom of the cars and the system itself, and one of the rollers shattered," Steve DeWitt, a senior vice president at ACS Infrastructure Development, Inc., told City News Service on Tuesday.
ACS Infrastructure Development, Inc. is a transportation company and the majority stakeholder in the group of companies that operates Angels Flight.
"In order to replace the rollers, we had to shut it down," said DeWitt.
"There's no safety concern at all, the cars are going to run fine," he added.
The world's shortest railway ferries carry passengers up and down Bunker Hill in downtown Los Angeles. It has two funicular cars, running in opposite directions on a shared cable on the 298 feet (91 meters) long inclined railway.
The troubled railway has been closed and reopened a few times. Originally opened in 1901, Angels Flight has given more than 100 million rides along its hillside track. It once reopened in 2010 only to be shut down again for an unsafe wheel in 2011 and closed again in 2013, after both cars went off the rails. Enditem
