Construction in the Rubio

CHAPTER FOUR

Construction in the Rubio

By September of 1892 Lowe was dynamiting his way into Rubio Canyon (photo lower left). It is historically important to realize that this all occurs just 3 months prior to the formation of the San Gabriel Timberland Reserve.

Crews of men carved into the granite mountain side enough to clear a narrow gage right-of-way for the little cars coming up from Altadena (photo right).

It's obvious that the workers in the photo at the top of the page posed for the shot which shows them busily working on an already completed section of track.

In the mean time, work was going on at the corner of Lake Avenue and Calaveras Street to prepare Mountain Junction see map . This station was set up along side the platform of the L.A. Terminal Railway 1 which ran up from Los Angeles to a point just north of Calaveras, about where the post office stands today. In the above right photo is a picture of Prof. Lowe with others aboard one of his work cars. These are true electric trolley cars with a strung overhead wiring.

Sitting next to the Professor is A. W. Decker, an unsung hero of the Mount Lowe Railway. Decker is the electrical engineer (mind you, that this electricity stuff is a brand new commodity on the commercial scene in 1892) who supervised all the installation of the electrical systems, from powerhouse to batteries. Unfortunately, Decker was dying of consumption --- tuberculosis --- and had to be carted out to the construction sites each day. His technical knowledge of electricity was pioneering genius. He developed theories and application of electrical technology the likes of which was unequaled. Decker died two months after the opening of the railway at the age of 41.

If I were to guess, I would say the young lady standing at the front of the car is Lowe's youngest daughter Zoë. The person next to her is not a younger brother, but a very short trolley operator.

The LA Terminal Railway was the only rapid transit system in Altadena at the time, but its scheduling was so poor and unpredictable, Lowe needed to find alternate means of transporting people from the city below to Mountain Junction. Pasadena City fought him at every turn to obtain a franchise for a street rail system that would link Pasadena more adequately to Altadena.

Lowe had to rely on his stage coach, the Tally Ho 2. He attempted to run a route to Los Angeles with it, but for the fact that it was so rough riding, dusty, and only held six people, max, it did little to help his ridership. The Tally Ho was teamed at Mountain Junction and used the Opera House as one of its station stops

The Rubio Division terminated at a bridge which traversed the narrows of Rubio Canyon below what would become the grade for the incline portion of the railroad.

This platform see map will serve as a transfer point for passengers from the trolley to the incline cars. Upon it will be built the Rubio Pavilion.

The next section of the right-of-way dealt with negotiating the incline portion of the hill that rose to the Echo Mountain promontory. A grade of 62% was cleared by hand. There was no amount of flogging or enticement that could get the usual beasts of burden to negotiate the steep terrain. The only animal dumb enough to try was man. That meant all construction materials had to taken up by man as well.

In the photo to the right we see a work crew gauging the incline rails. This once more becomes an important historical note in worldwide railway engineering. This type of incline is referred to as a funicular. It is based on a balanced cable car system by which one car is up at the top and one is down at the bottom, and when they move they are merely changing places. As one descends the other ascends. They pass each other exactly in the middle of the traverse. The conventional wisdom of the time provided that two rail-running cars operating on a funicular required four rails.

Looking at the photo to the left one can see there are no animals. David Macpherson is the man standing on the left of the cleared right-of-way (arrow). This grade would becoming known world wide as The Great Incline.

The problem that arose from grading The Great Incline was the excessive amount of widening and shoring that would be required to accommodate four rails. Inventive Prof. Lowe overnight conjured a draft of a railing system by which the inboard wheels of each car could share a center rail. The only place where four rails was needed was dead center of the incline where the cars would pass. One could see at a glance that this would reduce proposed costs by 25%. The three-railed funicular became a worldwide standard for funiculars. The most famous of Italian mountain rail funiculars were the quickest to adapt to Lowe's design.

Meanwhile, Prof. Lowe (to the far right) was inspecting work atop Mt. Echo see map with his enclave of prospective investors.

In the kitchens area of Mount Echo, as seen in the photo to the left, cooks prepare meals. The bearded gentleman laying a tray on the retaining wall is Jason Brown, son of abolitionist John Brown of Harper's Ferry fame. He, his brother Owen, and sister Ruth Thompson had moved to Altadena in the 1880's following the amnesty that freed them as fugitives of justice. They lived in a overly modest log cabin in Millard Canyon. Owen Brown is buried on Little Round Top, a knoll in the foothills of Altadena, California.

1. The LA Terminal Railway was opened on Jan. 31, 1888 and ran from Downtown Los Angeles to Altadena. Officially named the San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake Ralroad, it was to extend its ends to San Pedro and Salt Lake City, Utah. It reached San Pedro, but never made Salt Lake. It carried quarry rock from the Arroyo Seco to San Pedro to build the Long Beach Harbor, then became defunct by 1921.

2. The Tally Ho took first place in the Sixth Annual Rose Parade (1895) as a "flowered float", though that's not what they called them back then.