Historical photos of the Expo Line (then Air Line)

Here we are at USC now. Mudd Hall of Philosophy in the background by Trousdale is still exactly the same after all these years.

This is the P.E. Car 1299 on a charted club trip. The line was de-electrified one month later. This was a private car that belonged to the officials of the P.E.R.Y. It had leather chairs, a kitchen, bathroom, and carpets.
September 27, 1953



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We are now at Venice/Robertson, that is Culver Junction. This is P.E. electric-powered Engines 1603 and 1625 meeting a westbound electric freight train at Culver Junction in Culver City.
December 13, 1953



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Now we are at the Palms Station, commonly known as Palms Depot. The station building would be facing the freeway directly behind the northwestern corner of the Price Self-Storage facility today, which was the Great Depot Grounds then. This is near Vinton Ave and National Blvd in Palms. The station was saved from condemnation in the 70s and now serves as the visitors center of the Heritage Square Museum. The palm trees on the left that gave Palms its name were wiped off by the Santa Monica freeway built in 1963.

So, this is P.E. Car 5117 westbound at Palms Depot on a chartered trip. Note that the Air Line was the last Pacific Electric passenger line to be abandoned.
July 17, 1953



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More to come tomorrow, including Cheviot Hills and West LA.

Now we continue the tour toward Santa Monica. Here we are still in Palms, looking west from Palms Depot, with an eastbound train, PERY Engine 1617, approaching. This is a block east of Motor Ave, near Vinton Ave. The area on the right side with Palms trees were replaced by the freeway in 1963. This section of the right-of-way is above the street level from National Blvd, due to natural topography. Palms (the neighborhood, not the trees) is to the south of the tracks. Note that the tracks are bending toward the bridge over Motor Ave.
June 20, 1953



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This seems to be a train (Engine 1607) heading east toward Palms near the western portal of the freeway tunnel today (then no tunnel or freeway). On the right side of the picture is a restricted-used sewer easement between the tracks and houses in the southernmost part of Cheviot Hills. There is a possibility of including a bike and pedestrian trail along the restricted-use easement today, since the tunnel is not wide enough to accommodate it. On the left side are the houses that were wiped of by the freeway.
June 20, 1953



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Here is another trench photo. PERY Car 5117 westbound in the Northvale Rd trench. It might be further west toward Overland Ave than the train in the previous photo.
July 17, 1953



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These two pictures conclude the Air Line pictures Alan Weeks sent to me.

They are near the "Ocean Park Car House" in Ocean Park in south Santa Monica, the terminus of the "Air Line."

Interestingly they built a huge amusement park named "Pacific Ocean Park" at this location on the beach, aimed at competing with Disneyland, five years after the Air Line was discontinued. The amusement park itself didn't survive more than a decade and today all of its traces are completely gone.

Actually the line didn't really end here at all but continued to Venice, Marina Del Rey, Westchester, and Inglewood, on a private right-of-way along Neilson Way, Main St, Electric Ave near Abbot Kinney, north of Marina Del Rey, along the entrance of the Marina Freeway, Jefferson Blvd, and Centinela Ave. This part of the line wasn't called the Air Line but Inglewood Line. The Inglewood Line terminated at the BNSF Harbor Subdivision right-of-way in Inglewood. Therefore, it was an Expo - Green and Expo - Crenshaw Lines connector.

Wouldn't it be great if the Expo Line continued from Santa Monica all the way to Venice and even Inglewood, connecting with the Green and Crenshaw Lines? Unfortunately, some parts of the Inglewood Line right-of-way were sold to private entities by the city and the right-of-way is no longer fully intact today. Although, you could still see the remnant tracks along Electric Ave in Venice today. Most parts of this right-of-way today are city parking lots or empty but in some lots there is development.

This is PERY Car 5117 again in Ocean Park near the end of the Air Line, or the beginning of the Inglewood Line. This was a Sunday charter trip and someone knew no regular trains ran on Sunday, so used the track for a parking lot. Photographer thinks that someone got the door open and they moved it out of the way.
July 17, 1953



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Are there plans to preserve some of the old track and put them in a museum...(Orange Empire Probably)?

Just a correction in the electric locomotive comments: PE 1619 thru 1631 were the "home brew" freight motors with GE motors and controls. 1601 thru 1618 were Baldwin-Westinghouse units; none of them survived. There were some smaller Baldwin-Westinghouse unit in the 1590's, one of them is preserved in Argentina. Note that these freight motors shared the track with "Hollywood" cars--the FRA and/or the PUC would "have a cow" if any railway tried that today.

I wouldn't say "most unique", but LA did have more electric railway service than most of the cities that went all-bus. Some will hoist the "National City Lines did it" banner, but the real story is so much more involved than a mere change of ownership of the transit system. Southern California was a particularly fertile place to grow the automobile culture. Our climate meant that people could drive all year (in the old days, folks in cold climates would store their cars until the spring thaw). Cars could be run for many years longer where there were no harsh winters with road salt. We don't have as many geographical barriers as many cities have that force traffic into a few bottlenecks (e. g. the SF-Oakland Bay Bridge). Many of the people who settled here after World War II came from small towns were there was no tradition or habit of riding public transit. I'm old enough to remember when you could buy a usable car for a few hundred dollars, fuel it with 25-cent gas and keep it running with junkyard or Sears parts that you installed yourself in the "shade tree garage".

Actually the first statement is mostly wrong and the second statement is totally wrong, in fact the complete opposite of the truth.

Most Pacific Electric lines had dedicated rights-of-way. You are referring to the Downtown pictures, which are misleading you.

Pacific Electric Railway is what drove the suburban boom on its very own. In fact, these lines were all suburban lines, and they were the equivalent of our freeway system today. If we didn't have Pacific Electric, we wouldn't have the suburban sprawl today.

The following map will make you understand this.

Pacific Electric Railway (click here to enlarge):



So, basically the Pacific Electric lines were replaced by freeways. As a result, suburban people started driving instead of taking the train.

No one should say "most unique." By definition, unique is a characteristic of one and no other.

OK, enough pedantry for now. My two cents on Pacific Electric, and reflecting that I was not even alive to see streetcars in L.A.:

Efforts today should undo the mistakes we made in the past, not to win a past battle that was lost.

In general, we didn't lose the streetcars because of a conspiracy. That was an effigy that took a life of its own because the people who had a chance to do right didn't. Sorry, it wasn't GM that killed off the streetcars. It was Angelenos who began a pattern of what I like to call "L.A.ing up things."

L.A.ing up means the capability of Los Angeles -- collectively from leaders to ordinary residents -- to make the choices wrong. Making the wrong choices implies that had another alternative been pursued, it would have been correct. But, reversing those words, making the choices wrong means no matter what we do, we have a near certain chance of dropping the ball.

Ripping out the streetcars was a mistake, but it's not because we lost the vehicles. It's because we lost the rights of way. Few people know this, and nobody wants to admit this, but buses were the technological successor to the streetcars. They both do the same things, but buses made the most sense because they are more economical. The bus conversion began at a time when streetcar vehicles and infrastructure were coming at the end of a life cycle. At the same time, ridership had started to see its decline. So it made business sense to replace decaying streetcar stock with buses.

The problem was that when we lost the rights of way, public transit still left a persistently high ridership in L.A. We were all-bus for about 30 years, and it led to slow and steady ridership declines. This sent a feedback loop that transit should not be invested in because the ridership was on a downward spiral with no bottom. However, we maintained remarkably high passenger yields per vehicle. L.A. stuck with buses because of transit's downward trend, but it ignored the vehicle productivity. Had these rights of way been preserved, we could have maintained some form of high-capacity transit service.

L.A. didn't expand public transit because it perceived it as a diminishing return, while at the same it was hamstrung by using limited-capacity buses for a much higher-capacity ridership.

All of our efforts, including the 1980 and 1990 sales taxes, have been rear-guard efforts to correct for the 30-year "dark ages" between the last streetcar and the introduction of the Blue Line. Whatever credit we have is because of riders and advocates snatching success from the jaws of failure.

Great pics, Gokhan. What a resource for local historians.

Wow, a real creek, not a concrete channel!

Did you notice the dual-gauge tracks on the bridge? I wonder if they are from the steam-operation days? The PE 1299 in the photo was a special business car with leather seats and other fancy decoration. It's now in OERM:


The Winslow Station photo confirms that National Blvd in Palms was grade-separated even back in those days. This bridge doesn't appear to be exactly at the same location as the current bridge according to the historical aerials. This is because National Blvd was moved about 50 ft west to join straight with Palms Blvd when the freeway was built. So, I wonder if they moved the same steel bridge onto new abutments when they built the freeway or they made a new steel bridge.