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Post by pithecanthropus on Mar 3, 2011 22:10:52 GMT -8
Many years ago, in the early 1970s, I saw a local news story on TV, in which some charitable enterprise or other organized a beach day for some kids in South Central. The voice-over started off with something to the effect of, If you grew up in this city, you've probably spent many days at the beach...unless you live in the wrong part. And it went on to explain that a lot of kids in the poorer areas never got to enjoy the sand and sun and surf.
But here's the interesting part, with regard to this community: They used a special train to ferry the kids over to -- the South Bay, would it have been? Does anyone here remember this incident, and have any more details about what beach they took the kids to, and what rail lines they would have run that train on?
When I saw the story I hadn't been on a train in my life, but they had an interior shot of the kids sitting in a coach, which looked like a typical Santa Fe day coach. I do have a pretty good memory of what those coaches looked like, because later on I did ride in them during my first year away at college, when Amtrak was still using a few on the L.A. to San Diego line.
But back to the mystery trip. Even today there's some sort of short freight line that you pass over on the Blue Line; as a matter of fact, Slauson Station is directly over it. Could that possibly have been where the trip would have started? For this reason, my theory is that they didn't go to Santa Monica or Venice, but to Manhattan, Hermosa, or Redondo. Then again I suppose a trip to Santa Monica would have been feasible, too, since I imagine the entire Air Line was intact in those days.
Well I do have access to the entire archives of the Los Angeles Times, so I may be able to answer my own question after a little research.
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elray
Junior Member
Posts: 84
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Post by elray on Mar 8, 2011 15:24:50 GMT -8
Was this it?
Politically-correct readers: Cover your eyes.
"Ghetto Children Flee Poverty for a Day". Alan Cartnal, July 27, 1971.
Picture blocked due to copyright - caption: "All aboard for fun: Cliff Brown, coach-tutor of Direction Sports, and 50 ghetto kids in the program line up for the ride on Amtrak San Diegan to Sea World"
The article discloses that Amtrak donates the fare, and KNXT (CBS-2) sponsors the group.
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Post by bobdavis on Mar 8, 2011 23:30:42 GMT -8
This would have been about three months after Amtrak took over most of the long distance (and medium distance) passenger train service in the US. 50 children and 5 to 10 adults to accompany them would require one extra passenger car; in those days Santa Fe was running the San Diegan service for Amtrak, and they probably had plenty of spare cars available. And July 27 was a Tuesday, usually one of the lighter days for San Diegan passenger loadings.
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Post by James Fujita on Mar 9, 2011 23:20:44 GMT -8
BTW, the Slauson tracks were part of the Santa Fe's Harbor Sub.
It's an odd story, but apparently Santa Fe way back a century ago wasn't quite convinced that San Pedro was going to be the harbor. So they built a rail line that aimed for El Segundo via what's now Slauson and Florence. Then they took the meandering path through the South Bay to the harbor.
I still think it's a great way to get to the airport, and it would be an excellent way to get from the South Bay to LAX, but you can see why ATSF was glad when the Alameda Corridor came into existance.
anyways, I suspect that rather than have a special train from South Central to San Diego, they probably would have just bused the kids to Union Station and let Amtrak take over from there.
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Post by jeisenbe on Mar 10, 2011 7:23:45 GMT -8
It's an odd story, but apparently Santa Fe way back a century ago wasn't quite convinced that San Pedro was going to be the harbor. So they built a rail line that aimed for El Segundo via what's now Slauson and Florence. Then they took the meandering path through the South Bay to the harbor. Originally the city of Los Angeles was thinking of placing the port in the Santa Monica, or the south bay. Originally, San Pedro bay had long, shallow mud flats, and lots of dredging was required to make it a deep-water port. "The Southern Pacific Railroad and Collis P. Huntington wanted to create Port Los Angeles at Santa Monica, and built the Long Wharf there in 1893. However the Los Angeles Times publisher Harrison Gray Otis and U.S. Senator Stephen White pushed for federal support of the Port of Los Angeles at San Pedro Bay. The Free Harbor Fight was settled when San Pedro was endorsed in 1897 by a commission headed by Rear Admiral John C. Walker (who later went to become the chair of the Isthmian Canal Commission in 1904). With U.S government support breakwater construction began in 1899 and the area was annexed to Los Angeles in 1909. The Los Angeles Harbor Commission was founded in 1907. In 1912 the Southern Pacific Railroad completed its first major wharf at the port." The Port of Long Beach was also founded in 1911, just to the east. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_Los_Angeles
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Post by bobdavis on Mar 11, 2011 12:05:37 GMT -8
I recently purchased a photo of Redondo Beach taken in 1914. It shows a plethora of steam (presumably Santa Fe) and PE tracks. There's even a water tank for the steam locomotives. In the distance is the Pacific Light and Power Redondo Generating Station, which was part of the Huntington empire. Santa Fe had a spur running to the vicinity of today's Redondo steam plant; it was probably used in the 1940's to bring in material for the first part of that project and possibly one or two of the expansion projects. I would guess that the last customer for the spur was a lumber yard inland from the power plant. The Santa Fe right-of-way is now a trail. Pacific Electric service to Redondo Beach ended in 1940.
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Post by pithecanthropus on May 31, 2011 12:56:06 GMT -8
Hi all, I just came back to this thread, finally.
Given my failure to find anything about this on the web, I'm almost inclined to accept elray's post as the answer, except for one major discrepancy: I clearly remember it being reported as going to a beach, and not Sea World. Which isn't to say that both couldn't be true--the Surf Line does run virtually on the beach for a few miles with a stop at San Clemente Pier.
bobdavis, PE may have ended regular service to Redondo, but that doesn't mean the tracks were gone the next day. For instance, freight traffic continued to move along the Santa Monica Air Line until the 1980s.
Additionally--to this day there are working tracks in El Segundo, running north to south near Aviation and Imperial. I've seen freight cars being moved along it, but I don't know where they connect to the rest of the system.
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Post by jeisenbe on Jun 9, 2011 14:59:36 GMT -8
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