Historical photos of the Expo Line (then Air Line)

[Gokhan]

Sept 13, 2009 10:17:06 GMT -8 James Fujita said:

are you sure those are dual-gauge tracks and not a safety guard rail? the P.E. was standard gauge, wasn't it?

The original line built in 1875 by Los Angeles & Independence RR was a 3.5' narrow-gauge steam line. I'm not sure when it was converted into standard gauge, perhaps shortly after, when Southern Pacific bought it. The electric operations started in 1908, and yes, Pacific Electric was 4' 8.5" standard gauge. Los Angeles Railway was narrow gauge but only served the central area. I can't tell for sure from the photo but they look like dual-gauge tracks. It's possible that this bridge is really old and from the steam days.

[darrell]

I bet they're guard rails on the Ballona Creek bridge. The other photos at about the same time don't show extra rails.

Here's an interesting comparison of this bridge c. 1953 vs. July 2008. The same wooden bridge railing and concrete bridge pier are in both. According to Appendix G of the Final EIS (PDF page 4) this bridge was built in 1938, I presume during construction of the concrete channel of Ballona Creek.

Added credit: The Pacific Railroad Museum, Pacific Railroad Society.

[Gokhan]

I'm puzzled how come Ballona Creek wasn't a concrete channel in 1953. Could it be that this photo is from circa 1935, and the bridge is a different one? In fact I don't even see an abutment on the far side. Although, it appears that the wooden guards are the same. So, if the bridges are not the same, they must have reused the wooden guards on the new (1938) bridge.

Actually, looking at the pictures again, the wooden guards, although similar, are not the same. The angles of the triangles, as well as the upper junctions are different, and the lower edges have different lengths. So, I think this is strong evidence that this photo is pre 1938 and the bridges are different.

Also note that PE 1299 is running in the photo. This was a special business car with leather armchairs, tables, kitchen, and restroom. If this wasn't a special chartered trip, it shows that the Air Line was a classy line, carrying the businessmen to the Westside and Santa Monica.

[Gokhan]

Santa Monica Air Line's last day

Los Angeles Times
September 30, 1953

[darrell]

I believe this special car was used for one or more fan trips near the end of passenger service on the Air Line. Alan Weeks wrote that he was on such a trip in this car, and you see this car in some of his photos dated in 1953.

The non-concrete sides of Ballona Creek in the photo could be explained either that the upper slope was graded but left as dirt that grew plants above a concreted bottom - as the upper slope looks farther south from here even now - or that a dirt channel was cut around 1938 but not concreted this far upstream until later.

I think that is the same handrail and walkway boards, only it looks like the flat board on top of the handrail has been removed.

[Gokhan]

Here is the history of Ballona Creek.

Apparently it became concrete in 1935.

Alan rode a fan trip with 1299 in 1949 and he was on the last Air Line trip at the end of September 1953. That wasn't the 1299 but some regular PE car.

So, I'm still puzzled. Perhaps we can get a date for the photo.

But I guess the color slides would be very expensive in 1934, if available at all. So, perhaps, this is from the 1949 fan trip and this part of Ballona Creek was concretized after 1950. It must have been challenging to do it with the bridge in place though, if this was the case.

[Gokhan]

Perhaps this is the answer to the puzzle.

Ballona Creek was realigned after it was converted into a concrete channel. The old creek was a very winding creek, as opposed to the straight channel now. It's possible that this is a 1949 photo, but this is not the concrete channel but the old creek ditch, which was still not filled with earth in 1949. Hence, this bridge was an old bridge across the dry ditch, not the 1938 bridge further east on the concrete channel. See the 1930 plans:

[Jason Saunders]

www.historicaerials.com/ shows a straightened partially concrete lined channel in 1948 at the location of the bridge. I tried putting a direct link here but their link feature produces a bad link. The 1948 aerial photograph shows much more nearby development then this photograph. Bassed on this alone I would say the photograph is older then 1948.

[Gokhan]

That was a good idea to look at the aerials.

I think the concrete U channel was the same in 1948 as today. If you use the compare tool, boundaries of the channel are the same as today. So, this is more evidence that the 1949 fan-trip photo is not taken over the Ballona Creek concrete U channel or the railroad bridge over the concrete U channel.

Note the black strcuture over the line in the center in the 1948 aerial. I think that's the bridge in the photo:



The same structure appears with a path underneath it in the 1952 aerial. Another evidence that it's a bridge:



So, this was one of the most amazing Expo-history puzzles we've encountered!

[darrell]

I looked at Historic Aerials for both 1948 and 1952, and to my eye they're consistent with this photo. In both: Ballona creek has a concrete bottom but earth slopes beyond that; there are no National Blvd. bridges; and the building on the right in the distance appears to be the saw-tooth-roof building in the aerial.

Alan Weeks's photo of PE 1299 crossing Motor Ave. is dated September 27, 1953. That is likely also the date of the Ralph Melching Ballona bridge photo.

[darrell]

Images to go with my last post:



The yellow arrows point to the corresponding bridge pier and edge of the concrete channel in each photo. Note how the pier is set back slightly behind the channel edge.



Here's the 1952 Historic Aerials with labels. Seems conclusive to me. Here's the full older photo again for reference.

[Gokhan]

Yes, the sawtooth roof and pier seem very convincing, which had convinced me before you posted the details on them. So, I now believe that this is the current location and bridge. The one I noticed in the historic aerials might be an old creek bridge, perhaps the original Ballona Creek bridge, that is no longer present.

It seems to be a very strange angle in the circa-1950 photo. The pier appears to be too close to the bridge deck. I mistook the far pier for the near pier. It would be nice if we had a historical photo from a good angle.

[darrell]

I also realized that the concrete channel edge was not visible in my original crop of the Melching photo, but appeared in the enlarged detail from my original scan.

[Gokhan]

Sept 14, 2009 9:32:22 GMT -8 darrell said:

I also realized that the concrete channel edge was not visible in my original crop of the Melching photo, but appeared in the enlarged detail from my original scan.

Yep, it's like in those mystery movies when they see a small sign after enlarging the photo.

[darrell]

Sept 13, 2009 16:48:56 GMT -8 darrell said:

There's some good footage of Red Car PE 1299 at the Orange Empire Railway Museum in this new 2009 video, starting at 4:18. Click in the YouTube frame, then HD, then full screen to see it best.

[Gokhan]

This is a great history of the Expo Line from the Phase 2 FEIR, found in the Cultural Resources Chapter:

Native Americans are known to have been present in the Los Angeles area as early as 9,000
years B.P. By the second half of the eighteenth century, Spanish explorers began to establish
missions across the region, and in 1822 the newly independent state of Mexico controlled this
area. Spanish and Mexican rule influenced the decline of the Native American population in the
area. In 1848, California was ceded to the United States, and the Gold Rush migration and
tourism brought new settlers to the area. Improvements in transportation facilities in the second
half of the nineteenth century were soon to transform the region.

Railroad and port construction significantly advanced development in the project region. In
1872, the Southern Pacific Railroad agreed to build their line through Los Angeles in a pivotal
arrangement that gave Southern Pacific a monopoly on Los Angeles’s port at San Pedro,
securing Southern Pacific’s dominance over rail lines into Los Angeles for the next decade.
When the Southern Pacific Railroad extended its line from San Francisco to Los Angeles in
1876, newcomers poured into the area.

In the early 1870s, Colonel Robert S. Baker acquired vast tracts of Rancho San Vicente y Santa
Monica, Rancho Boca de Santa Monica, and Rancho La Ballona. He envisioned a port city at
Santa Monica linked by rail to Los Angeles. Baker joined with Senator John Percival Jones from
Nevada, who established the Los Angeles & Independence Railroad (LA&IRR), the town of
Santa Monica, and a 1,740-foot wharf to compete with the Southern Pacific Railroad’s
monopoly. Jones advertised Santa Monica for settlement, and in July 1875, he began
auctioning parcels in the new township of Santa Monica creating rapid development of the area.
In November 1875, the line was complete to Los Angeles. However, cutthroat competition with
the Southern Pacific Railroad became fierce and Jones was forced to sell the fledgling LA&IRR
in 1877 to Southern Pacific and his rival, Collis Huntington. Southern Pacific reduced traffic on
the line and the Santa Monica’s boomtown speculation halted.

Southern Pacific maintained its dominance in Los Angeles until the 1880s. Competition between
railroad companies in the 1880s drove fares to an unprecedented low and population growth to
an all-time high. With the affordable transportation, new settlers came in droves, and to
accommodate them, over 60 new towns were laid out in the Los Angeles area between 1887
and 1889. With the indication that Southern Pacific would lose its monopoly over the expanding
port at San Pedro, Huntington renewed the campaign for a deep-water port at Santa Monica.
Ironically, the former LA&IRR, which was already owned by Southern Pacific and had been
practically disabled to protect Southern Pacific’s interests at the port in San Pedro, was now its
chief interest. The rail line and the wharf at the new Port Los Angeles in Santa Monica were
completed in 1893, and Southern Pacific transferred its operations from San Pedro to Port Los
Angeles in Santa Monica. After years of controversy, San Pedro was determined to be the
official site of the Los Angeles Port in 1897, having far-reaching effects of the development of
the Los Angeles area.

In 1906, the Los Angeles Pacific Company, a trolley line (i.e., the Los Angeles Pacific Balloon
Route) that took tourists over the wharf and the sea, leased the line from Port Los Angeles east
to Sentous (1.2 miles east of Culver Junction, refer to Figure 3.7-3 [Map of the Los Angeles
Pacific Balloon Route]) and electrified it in 1908 (part of this segment is within the current project
area). The remainder of the line to Clement Junction in downtown Los Angeles was electrified in
1910 and 1911. By 1913, the Pacific Electric Railway Company assumed control of Los Angeles
Pacific. Under control of both Los Angeles Pacific and Pacific Electric, the rail line from Los
Angeles to Santa Monica was known as the “Santa Monica Air Line” because once outside the
city limits of Los Angeles, it made a straight line to the beaches of Santa Monica.

A second electric railway line, the Venice Short Line (also a part of the Los Angeles Pacific
Balloon Route), connected Downtown Los Angeles with the beach communities of Venice and
Santa Monica. Construction of the easternmost portion of the line, from downtown Los Angeles
to Vineyard, was completed in 1897 by the Pasadena & Pacific Railway Company. Los Angeles
Pacific gained control over the line by 1902 and completed the portion of the route from
Vineyard to Ocean Park. The Venice Short Line ran along a private ROW in the median of
Venice Boulevard (within Segment 1a [Venice/Sepulveda]).

The expansion of trolley lines increased the development of autonomous communities between
Santa Monica and Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Pacific‘s Balloon Route Trolley sightseeing
excursion brought more visitors into the area after 1902. East of Santa Monica, the communities
of Sawtelle, Home Junction, and Palms, located on former lands of Rancho La Ballona, slowly
developed from agricultural fields to residential and commercial centers.

Santa Monica continued to develop as a resort city with the help of the Santa Monica Air Line
and other lines that serviced the popular beach areas. Hundreds of thousands of tourists had
come by railway, and then by electric streetcars. Despite the presence of some light industries,
including brick factories and a lumber yard, banks, and a small business district, between 1875
and 1930, tourism was the dominant local industry. With the collapse of Jones’s speculative
LA&IRR, tourism suffered until the 1880s when the Southern California boom spurred by
competitive railway fares brought newcomers to the beach. Into the 1890s, the south side
beach, known as Ocean Park, developed as a quirky tourist attraction with an ostrich farm, a
carnation farm, and attractions around the new pier that propelled the area to prominence as a
place for tourists and day-trippers from Los Angeles.

Throughout the twentieth century, the City of Los Angeles expanded rapidly by absorbing land
and communities around it to create the Westside as it is presently configured.

[darrell]

Alan Fishel just found this photo of Air Line car #1051 waiting in the Pacific Electric's old 6th and Main depot.

It is from the Raymond E Younghans collection, now with ERHASC/OERM. Date and photographer aren't known.

[Gokhan]

Pobably a really old one, possibly 1920s. Note that this is a wooden car.



1014 was scrapped in 1950.

More info:

www.erha.org/pe1000h.htm

Note that the Pacific Electric cars were wider than the modern subway cars and had a service speed of in excess of 70 MPH. That's why Pacific Electric was not a trolley system but a hybrid between commuter rail and trolley system. That's why our modern light-rail system (Blue, Gold, and Expo Lines) is not a conventional light-rail system but a hybrid between commuter rail and light-rail with primarily high-speed, at-grade, private right-of-way segments like Metrolink. The difference is stops are less frequent and the cars are individually electric powered.

Thanks to the suburban nature of Los Angeles, our commuter-rail/light-rail hybrids like the Expo, Blue, and Gold Lines are very suitable for rail transit, but the NIMBYs like Fix Expo and NFSR don't get it.

[jeisenbe]

Darrell, those are nice looking station canopies. Unlike the Expo line's "Artistic" design, these protect passengers from sun and rain very well all the way along the platform, and the curving supports have an elegant, understated form.

The canopies at the Gold Line platform above Union Station are also nice, though short. They feature prominently in an advertisement for Lipitor that has been appearing on the back cover of many medical journals. This station is similar: www.flickr.com/photos/rob-wilson/1898464022/

[bobdavis]

The photo showing PE 1012 signed for the "Air Line" would be sometime between 1947 and 1950. There is a "modernized Blimp" (400 class car from the Bay Area) to the left of 1012, which would have be "outshopped" in 1947 or 48, and 1012 was scrapped in 1950. 1012 was one of a dozen 1000-class cars that I saw in "Race Track special" service in the late 1940's. They run to Santa Anita Park, offload the horse-racing fans, then go past my house in Monrovia to storage tracks on the east side of town. Fortunately, 1001, a mate to 1012 has been saved, and runs on special occasions at Orange Empire Railway Museum.
One more thing: take this "service speed in excess of 70MPH" with the proverbial grain of salt. This has been part of the "oral tradition" about PE, but except for special "officers' cars", the Red Cars didn't have speedometers, and whether anyone timed mileposts with a stopwatch is open to question. Also, running a wooden interurban at 70MPH on typical PE track would probably be a rather "hair-raising" experience. The PE 1200-class steel interurbans would be a more solid ride, but they were also heavier. We should also consider power supply--unlike today's light rail and subway lines, PE substations were larger, but further apart. For example, the Monrovia-Glendora line had a sub at Arcadia, and one at Azusa. Even though my home was about a mile from the Arcadia Sub, when a 3-car train took power to leave the stop by our house, the lights dimmed noticeably.

[darrell]

This is posted on a back wall of Santa Monica's Ocean Park Omlette Parlor (2732 Main Street; this is by the restrooms):

[metrocenter]

Amazing picture.

The old Rand Corporation building (new as of this photo) cannot be seen because it was directly behind the train/billboard. Since the time of this photo, the Rand Corporation has replaced that building, and the location of that train is now occupied by the Viceroy Hotel.

[Gokhan]

Truly amazing! I'm looking at the end of the glory days of mass transit in Los Angeles with with tears. We are not able to make it to Venice or Inglewood anymore because of given-away Pacific Electric rights-of-way now occupied by tract houses or industrial buildings, but at least now it will make it to Santa Monica in five years.

[pithecanthropus]

One question I have never seen addressed is why the existing arterial streetcar lines wouldn't have been kept, even if buses were the vogue for new routes. When Ford democratized automobile ownership, I doubt if even he particularly advocated the elimination of rail transit in most cities. To be able to drive your own car was presumably meant to be another choice you could make, without the elimination of other choices that already existed.

Electric traction streetcars greatly outperformed buses in their ability to accelerate and decelerate smoothly, were far quieter, and -- at the time -- far cleaner than the diesel buses of the day. And the always vaunted flexibility of bus routes seems to be something of a red herring, because, for example, how often does a particular city bus route need to be rerouted? Today, if this happens in L.A., the impact of a road closure normally can, and does, turn the streets of the city into a giant parking lot for miles around--so rerouting a bus is next to worthless as a transit option.

My own theory is that it was ultimately a class issue. As the middle class gravitated toward autos, the streetcar tracks in the arterial streets like Wilshire became a nuisance. Only poor people used mass transit, and the bus seemed good enough for them.

[pithecanthropus]

Oct 15, 2008 22:26:14 GMT -8 Gokhan said:

Oct 15, 2008 21:37:26 GMT -8 whitmanlam said:

If you look at the old pictures, much of our Electric Railway did not have exclusive right-of-ways, they were street running trolleys, with numerous stops that were not practical for long distances.
Could not compete with the automobile in terms of speed or neighborhoods accessibility (We have alot of hills and valleys.)
When the suburban boom began, and the Electric rails could not follow those residents out to the suburbs, the money hungry politicians sold the track right-of-way as they stopped running the trains.

The problem wasn't the rails being killed off. The people abandoned public transportation for the car, and moved out of the city center in droves.

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.


(Map deleted as it doesn't need to be posted twice. To view map please see original post here. --Pithecanthropus )


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

Whenever see these maps my initial reaction is a flush of resentment and anger at the fact that we now have to deal with the lousy decisions of our grandfathers--who never for a moment considered the pollution that the car culture would bring, along with our dependence on faraway countries that are chaotic and culturally hostile. AFter that reaction subsides, what always strikes me about these maps is the names of long-gone, or renamed communities. Who knew there was a Bassett, or a Marlboro, or a Clifton?

[pithecanthropus]

Also I have to acknowledge that USC seems to be doing a tremendous job in the area of local history, and in making historical documents available online.

[bobdavis]

Time to bring up my childhood memories of the PE Monrovia-Glendora Line. Even as an eleven-year-old boy I could tell that the track was way overdue for replacement. PE's idea of track repair was to send out two laborers with a pile of ties and a bag of tools. They'd replace the ties that had turned to kindling wood one by one (compare that with the UP or BNSF track upgrading process). At the rate they could work, their grandsons would have been at it today had the track not been abandoned. According to one source, PE ran the numbers for rebuilding the track and buying PCC cars to re-equip the line, and then figured out how much it would cost to buy buses. Then the predecessor of Caltrans took PE's gateway of Aliso St. on the south side of Union Station for the 101 Freeway, and that was that. Back in the 1920's there had been a plan to build an elevated railway from the 6th & Main station to the LA River and run it north to the area where the Metro bus yard is now (PE's Macy St. Yard), but nobody wanted to "step up to the plate" with money to build it, and the Los Angeles Times ran a campaign against the whole idea. Another element in the PE story was that it was a subsidiary of Southern Pacific, and there were still people in power who remembered the days when SP was the "Octopus" that more or less ran the state of California to suit its corporate goals. The thought of using taxpayer money to improve something that belonged to SP choked off many plans to upgrade the Red Car system. By the time the quasi-governmental MTA (version 1) took over, there wasn't much left to save. The few remaining Red Cars were, to quote one observer, "old, worn and desperately in need of maintenance". Here again, the thoughts of rebuilding the tracks to Long Beach, San Pedro and Bellflower, and finding replacements for the "Blimps" (and the "Hollywood" cars on the Watts Local) were more than the MTA wanted to handle, and they probably got good financing arrangements for the buses. And I can remember that at the time the last PE and LARy lines "bit the dust", one could buy a serviceable automobile for a few hundred bucks, keep it running with junkyard, Sears, and Pep Boys parts, fuel it with 25 cents-a-gallon gas, and never set foot in a public-transit vehicle.

[Gokhan]

I have uploaded this clip on YouTube. In this hilarious movie, Harold Lloyd, who always did his stunts himself, runs from one vehicle to another to make his way to the girl he loves. In this clip from Girl Shy, he attempts to operate a Pacific Electric trolley in the streets of Los Angeles in 1924. This clip is dedicated to Harold as well as the extensive streetcar system of Los Angeles back then.

[Alexis Kasperavičius]

The Expo line before the Expo line.

[Gokhan]

Sept 1, 2011 21:14:39 GMT -8 Alexis Kasperavičius said:

The Expo line before the Expo line.

Great article, Alex, thanks! Here is the photo of the 1875 terminus at San Pedro and 4th in Downtown Los Angeles:



As mentioned in the article, the line was originally a narrow-gauge steam line intended to run between Los Angeles and Independence, Nevada, silver mines. But Southern Pacific never let them cross their main line at Alameda St and that's why the line ended up going north to Downtown Los Angeles instead.

Southern Pacific bought it after about two years and converted it into standard gauge. They also connected it to their line on Alameda St.

After it was electrified, the Pacific Electric Santa Monica Air Line would turn north on Long Beach Ave at the Amoco Junction (you can see it when riding the Blue Line) and then cross Washington on Long Beach Ave and then turn west to 9th St from Long Beach Ave and then north to San Pedro from 9th St and end up at 6th and Main on elevated tracks in Downtown LA.