Fifty years ago, a crime was committed at the Horseshoe Falls Incline Railway, now simply called the Falls Incline Railway, that remains unsolved to this day.
Originally built in 1966, the Incline Railway connects the Table Rock area to the higher-level Fallsview Tourist Area, which now includes Fallsview Casino Resort and several hotels.
On the Facebook page, Niagara History and Trivia, Mark Wright, a former operator and supervisor at the Incline Railway, laid out the entire bizarre story of the bombing.
He explained that in the middle of the night on August 10, 1973, some broke into the engine room at the upper level of the Incline Railway “planted about four sticks of dynamite near the machinery and inserted a timing wick. Evidently, it was improperly wound, and he returned to set a second wick.”
Wright said that just before 5:00 am, a vacationing couple, while on their hotel room balcony overlooking the Incline, witnessed what they described as a “tongue of flame” shoot out of the engine room side doorway.
Apparently, this door and two other metal doors facing the hill were blown off their hinges and sent flying to the bottom of the bank.
“When police arrived at the scene they found that there had been no injuries, the facility being unoccupied at that hour, and no fire, but the blast had inflicted considerable damage to the machinery that operated the device. The Incline Railway’s season was over.”
Wright said that other than speculating that the bomber might be mentally ill, no motive was put forward for this act.
“However, as a former operator and supervisor at the Incline,” Wright says, “it is apparent to me what the bomber’s intent was. Within the engine room, a large axle ran from one end to the other, with a large wheel known as a ‘bullwheel’ installed at each end. The steel cables that attached to the Incline’s passenger cars were wound around the bullwheels in opposite directions, so that when the axle was turned, one car traveled up the slope while the other descended.”
Wright believes the bomber was trying to “damage or destroy this brake, and maybe the cable, in order to send one of the passenger cars, parked as they were in the middle of the hill overnight, on a ‘free ride’ to a spectacular crash at the bottom station. It never happened.”
As Niagara Parks Commission (NPC) Chief Engineer Jim Harris noted at the time, “They have to take the winding drum and the shaft off and x-ray all the metal to see if there is any internal damage.” The ultimate cost of repairs, covered by insurance, came to $35,000.
The Niagara Parks Commission pegged its loss of revenue for the 1973 season, “based on 500,000 people taking 30-cent round-trips on the incline, at $150,000. The Royal Centre (formerly the Seagram Tower, today the Tower Hotel) and accompanying attractions incurred losses estimated at $3,000 a day, or about $72,000 for the remainder of the season to Labour Day.”
By May 1974, with everything fixed, the Incline Railway went on to record the busiest year in its history, with 1,084,153 paid one-way trips.
In 2013, the Incline Railway was replaced by the present, modern version with enclosed cars.
But way back in 1973, Wright said the NPC and the police each posted a reward of $1,000 for information regarding the identity of the incline bomber.
The rewards were never claimed, the perpetrator of the bombing was never identified, and the case remains unsolved to this day.
Back in the days when it was called the Horseshow Falls Incline Railways, you can see the two cars were open-air as opposed to the closed modules now.