Portal:Trains/Selected article/Week 11, 2020

The Mount Lowe Railway was the third in a series of scenic mountain railroads in America created as a tourist attraction on Echo Mountain and Mount Lowe, north of Los Angeles, California. The railway, originally incorporated by Professor Thaddeus S. C. Lowe as the Pasadena & Mt. Wilson Railroad Co., had the distinction of being the only scenic mountain, electric traction (overhead electric trolley) railroad ever built in the United States. Lowe's partner and engineer was David J. Macpherson, a civil engineer graduate of Cornell University. The Railway opened on July 4, 1893, and consisted of nearly seven miles (11.2 km) of track starting in Altadena at Mountain Junction station. Atop Echo stood a hotel and chalet as well as an astronomical observatory, car barns, dormitories and repair facilities, a casino and dance hall, and a menagerie of local fauna. For the seven years during which Lowe owned and operated the railway, it constantly ran into hard times, eventually being sold off. A series of natural disasters ate away at the facilities, the first of which was a kitchen fire in 1900. Further fires and floods eventually destroyed any remaining facilities, and the railway was officially abandoned in 1938 after a flood washed most everything off the mountain sides. Today, the ruins of Mount Lowe Railway remain. It was placed on the National Register of Historical Places on January 6, 1993, a listing that was enlarged in January 2015.