Historical photos of the Expo Line (then Air Line)

[Gokhan]

Great info! Imagine what a tourist attraction it would be if it was still running! Ah, people are so shortsighted...

[Gokhan]

Here is a nice article with pictures about the lost canals of Venice, California:

www.kcet.org/updaily/socal_focus/history/la-as-subject/the-lost-canals-of-venice-of-america.html

[Gokhan]

Same location today, looking from the other direction (toward the ocean):

[darrell]

Apr 24, 2012 19:28:29 GMT -8 Gokhan said:

This one actually might be an amusement roller coaster. It's hard to believe that it would be for actual trains.

I was looking for historic photos online today and found this different view of that amusement ride in 1886 at the Santa Monica Public Library photo collection, showing it to be going down the arroyo that formerly was south of what is now the Santa Monica Freeway. Note the old wooden bridge that carried Ocean Avenue over it, and the steam train about to head east to Los Angeles.



Here's another SMPL photo of its replacement bridge being built in 1902. Note the temporary Pacific Electric tracks from Venice on it. This bridge was demolished in 1934.



Here's a USC archive photo looking east from the Ocean Avenue viaduct in 1927, showing a red car and the Main Street arch bridge that now spans the freeway.



Here's another USC photo of the end of the former tunnel under the end of Palisades Park on the beach, also in 1927, before the current McClure Tunnel was built. The pier is on the right.



Finally, here is a nice color photo of a PE car at the terminus station on Ocean Ave. From the cameras I'm guessing is was a fan trip at the end of operations, c. 1950.

[darrell]

Eureka! I was digging through an old file folder and found this article from the old Santa Monica Outlook, dated Monday, March 14, 1988, documenting that the final run of the Airline freight train to Santa Monica was the preceding Friday, March 11, 1988, also that the city was thinking about light rail even then. I'll replace it with a better scan, but wanted to get this posted!

[Alexis Kasperavičius]

Nice find! I already put a reference to it in Wikipedia, the exact closing date could not be verified until this appeared.

[darrell]

Aug 24, 2014 22:41:22 GMT -8 Alexis Kasperavičius said:

Nice find! I already put a reference to it in Wikipedia, the exact closing date could not be verified until this appeared.

Same here - I've wanted to know that date for years.

[Gokhan]

Great pics, Darrell. I still think that the right place to put the Expo Line terminus was on Ocean Avenue like in that picture above, on the other side of the street though, right in front of the new park there, making a ninety-degree south turn at Colorado and Ocean and terminating in front of the park.

Thanks for finally looking up that newspaper article. Fred Gurzeler had told me that the last day was in March 1987 but he wasn't 100% sure but he would try to go to the library and check it at some point. Therefore, we reported in Wikipedia as 1987 for so many years. In fact, before Fred told me about it, Expo Authority was reporting it as 1986. Now, we know that it went all the way to 1988! This was the section of the right-of-way that went to 14th St (Fisher Lumber Yard). It's surprising that in that only one-year-long period before Metro purchased the right-of-way, that Media business bough the right of way between 17th and 16th Streets and erected that building in the middle of the tracks there! Imagine what would happen if Metro waited for another year!

I like it that Fisher Lumber said, "the loss of rail service will mean a 20 percent increase in the cost of lumber." Fisher Lumber also went out of business in the mid-2000s and sold the land between 16th and 14th Streets to the City of Santa Monica.

The line reportedly ran to Culver Junction or perhaps as far as Home Junction (Expo/Sepulveda) until 1990. Southern Pacific ended up leaving a box car beyond the early-1950s historic building in Palms, which was torn down and replaced by Price Self-Storage in early-to-mid 2000s during my first years in Palms. The box car was also scrapped. One of the old-timers in my neighborhood tells me that he used to love the soothing horn of the train, and one day in the late 1980s, it stopped all of a sudden. He even remembers the Palms Depot as it stood in its original location at Vinton Avenue, before they rescued it and moved it to the Heritage Square Museum.

[RMoses]

Here is another view of the PE Ocean Ave stop:







The building on the corner in the background remains today and is occupied by Makai on the ground-floor.

[Alexis Kasperavičius]

You know, maybe we should make a collection of these? Here's a short clip of a steam train coming in to Palms station, thought you'd all enjoy it!



This is an entire movie from 1937 and the clip is at 8:44 in case the link doesn't work properly.

[Gokhan]

Very cool find, Alex!

The station was located at Vinton Avenue. The station-access ramp next to the station is now replaced by the gated uphill ramp for the high school.

Click here to see how the area looks today. The station was located behind the corner of Price Self-Storage, accessed by the uphill ramp and adjacent to its right side on top of the hill.

[darrell]

I'm sure the steam railroad through Warsaw, Vermont had OCS wires ....
Wonder what it took to get this steam train out the Air Line?

[Gokhan]

Sept 17, 2014 10:21:52 GMT -8 darrell said:

Wonder what it took to get this steam train out the Air Line?

It's nothing out of the ordinary in 1937. Steam trains at Palms Depot for Hollywood movie scenes were common. I remember reading somewhere, perhaps in George Garrigues's Palms History book, about Ginger Rogers being fascinated with a steam locomotive and climbing on it and asking the engineer questions about various controls at Palms Depot.

Here is another Palms Depot scene from the 1929 Berth Marks movie of Laurel & Hardy. Pottsville, Pennsylvania, Station is Palms Depot and they are running westbound on the tracks after they get off the steam train at the end of the movie.



I had posted this 1958 The Return of Dracula movie clip before. The Douglas Aircraft building (now replaced with Price Self-Storage) can also be seen to the east of the station. The cars are driving up the access ramp at Vinton Avenue. The wooded area is now the freeway.

[Gokhan]

Do you think that pedestrian gates are something that were brought with the Pasadena Gold Line? Here is a scene from the 1947 movie Cass Timberlane -- about a judge from the right side of the tracks and a working-class girl from the wrong side of the tracks -- at a freight-rail crossing:

[Gokhan]

Is this thing under the asphalt on the northwestern corner of Vermont Ave and Exposition Blvd some rail relic?

[bzcat]

Just pavement deformation under the weight of NABI 60 BRT.

[transitfan]

^^^^ This. If there are any rails from the old V line buried under the pavement of Vermont at that spot, they would be toward the middle of the street, perhaps where the silver car is (just to the right of the school bus) (or maybe where the black car is, it's possible that Vermont has been widened in those 50+ years since the V was abandonded).

[Alexis Kasperavičius]

From a recent KCET Article When Big Numbers Roamed the Hills of Los Angeles

...billboards were beat for dramatic size as early as 1916 by advertisements for ketchup and pickles. On a slope in the Baldwin Hills, where Moynier Lane (now La Cienega Boulevard) curved among oil wells, and on another prominent slope near Culver City, "57" in giant concrete numbers reminded both motorists and Pacific Electric passengers to stock up on Heinz's 57 varieties of condiments.

The Heinz Company poured its iconic number over other hillsides in California, ...

The 57 overlooking the PE's Air Line route through Culver City to Santa Monica also was spectacularly illuminated. In the breathless language of the era's headlines, "Nine 1000-Watt Projectors Are Used to Illuminate Giant Figures So that They Are Read as Easily by Night as by Day."

The figure "5" was 70 feet wide. The "7" was 85 feet. Both were in the Heinz Company's "official" italic typeface with the tops of the numbers even and the tail of the "7" running a little lower than the "5." The story also noted that the hillside was green all year and that fog hardly every obscured the lighted numbers at night. "It is estimated," the story enthused "that ... an average of fully 2,000,000 people each month pass within view" of the numerals, because as Printers Ink Monthly noted in 1919, they "glisten out through the night to be read by automobilists and patrons of the railroads and interurban car lines."

[bobdavis]

Going back to the Venice Miniature Railway: after it was abandoned in its original location, the train wound up on the east side of El Monte, and I remember riding it there as a boy. It then moved to "Streamland" a small amusement park south of the Whittier Narrows Dam. The last location was north of the dam, in Whittier Narrows Park. What made this spot interesting was that a local railway enthusiast built a one-third scale replica of Pacific Electric combine 1304. It was powered by a Ford V-8 engine, and included an air compressor for brakes and for the full-size PE air whistle. It ran for a short period, but concerns about vandalism led to the final abandonment.

[Gokhan]

Looking east toward Hope St at the abandoned Expo Line tracks coming under the 110 Freeway. Los Angeles DMV is on the right. There was a discussion of a nonrevenue connector to connect the Expo and Blue Lines through this abandoned section but there was too much neighborhood opposition and the Councilwoman Jan Perry backed the opposition:



Looking west toward 110 Freeway and Flower St:



Looking east along the abandoned Expo Line tracks at Hope St:



Looking west along the abandoned Expo Line tracks toward Flower St:



You can barely see the trench wall ahead. The new underground Expo Line tracks turn toward north (toward right) at this intersection of Exposition Blvd and Flower St:



You can see the trench walls looking north on Flower St. Galen Center is in the background:



Looking east along the abandoned tracks under the freeway, which are being used as unlimited free parking. I was surprised how wide the right-of-way under the freeway was:



A new residential college is being built in the southeastern campus of the USC campus at Exposition Blvd and Figueroa St. You can see the trench walls in the second photo:





Trench walls along Exposition Blvd seen when looking south along Figueroa St:

[johanragle]

You just have to love neighborhood opposition to renewing infrastructure that was already there to begin with. It's not as if a non-revenue connector would result in an increase in noise, crime or traffic. If anything, it might help to clean up the area a bit since instead of a chunk of abandoned right of way, it would be Metro-maintained right of way.

I guess some NIMBYs are just too shortsighted to see past their own enormous noses.

[davebowman]

I work at USC and was told that construction site at Exposition and Figueroa is for a new Business School building. The new residential college, USC Village, is being built on the site of the old University Village shopping mall on Jefferson between Hoover and McClintock.

[bzcat]

Mar 10, 2015 11:27:37 GMT -8 davebowman said:

I work at USC and was told that construction site at Exposition and Figueroa is for a new Business School building. The new residential college, USC Village, is being built on the site of the old University Village shopping mall on Jefferson between Hoover and McClintock.

That is correct... new undergrad business school building

www.marshall.usc.edu/about/capital-projects/fertitta-hall/faq

[transitfan]

Wow, lots of construction projects at my alma mater and former employer! I probably wouldn't recognize the place today. What will happen to the current business school building (Hoffman Hall?)

[Gokhan]

USC has been building like crazy in and out of the campus, billions of dollars being spent on construction. Yes, many new buildings and all are very nice -- much nicer than what they built in the second half of the 20th century. Many new are currently being built. Commons and Toppings buildings were replaced by a giant campus-center building.

Hoffman Hall will stay of course. The new building is a giant, unprecedented-for-that-sole-purpose undergraduate-education-only building.

USC is also about the reach their 6-billion-dollar-donation-campaign goal well ahead of than expected.

If only there was that much support for rail transit, LA would have a better rail system than New York by now.

[Gokhan]

Alan K. Weeks was video-interviewed on Friday, May 13, 2016, when we were doing our preview ride. It turned out to be great.

Video: 63 years later, streetcar enthusiast takes the train again to Santa Monica

[masonite]

May 19, 2016 15:01:49 GMT -8 Gokhan said:

Alan K. Weeks was video-interviewed on Friday, May 13, 2016, when we were doing our preview ride. It turned out to be great.

Video: 63 years later, streetcar enthusiast takes the train again to Santa Monica

That is pretty cool. Love his photos. Glad to see he got to experience being on Expo as it must have been tough to be on the last Air Line ride and see the destruction of the whole Red and Yellow car system. 63 years is a long long time. That is more than twice as long as the Long Beach/Blue Line 29 year interruption.