Trolley Tuesday 01-12-21 - The History of the Pacific Electric, 1911-1961

One of the biggest and most mythical names in American railroading, the Southern Pacific Railroad (SP) originally began as a single route of the Central Pacific Railroad from their headquarters in San Francisco to Los Angeles, down the California coast. Over time, the identity of the SP outgrew its predecessor and, by the early 1900s, it had grown into one of the most powerful railroads in America. Such was the reach of the Southern Pacific that they already had two other interurban and street railway holdings on the Western Seaboard, with the Oregon Electric in Portland, Oregon, the Northwestern Pacific in Marin County, California, and the East Bay Electric in Oakland, California. With the addition of the Pacific Electric (PE), the southland streetcars were able to grow to unimaginable proportions, but perhaps that only accelerated its demise. On today's Trolley Tuesday, let's look back on the Pacific Electric, post-Great Merger, and why we still remember it fondly today.

The Great Merger

The Southern Pacific-Pacific Electric North Hollywood Station, now Groundworks Coffee.
(Los Angeles Daily News)

What railroad historians term the "Great Merger" was the final deal between Southern Pacific and local magnate Henry E. Huntington for control over the Pacific Electric in 1911. As detailed last week, the PE was always threatened by near-ownership from former (and now-dead) SP president, E.H. Harriman, and failed to turn a profit for both Huntington (who propped it up with his real estate profits) and financier Isaias Hellman. Harriman had always planned for the PE to serve as part of a massive Southland transit monopoly, wherein passengers arriving on SP trains could move about the city on PE trains, doubling the company's profits. When SP negotiated the terms of sale with Huntington, however, they had a much quicker way of becoming profitable in mind.

"Ship It on the Pacific Electric!"

Box Motor No. 1445 works a freight service.
(Charles Wherry, Alan Weeks)

Every good railroad knows that business lives and dies not on passengers, but on freight, and freight service was expanded on the Pacific Electric shortly after being purchased by SP. It only seemed natural, as the Long Beach Line down to the ports was lined with potential warehouse and factory customers from Downtown LA to Long Beach and San Pedro. It seemed this tactic worked well, as freight revenue climbed from $519,226 in 1911 to $1,203,956 in 1915 and SP put those earnings into investing into new freight locomotives from Baldwin Westinghouse. More profits came from the lucrative oil trains in Wilmington, San Pedro, and Huntington Beach. Other sources of important freight income came from "Less than Carload" or LCL services, essentially local bulk deliveries all over the system using modified interurban cars called "box motors".

Pacific Electric No. 1407 works an RPO service between San Pedro and Long Beach.
(Donald Duke)

Another lucrative service for the PE was the US Mail Railway Post Office (RPO) contract, one of a few interurban lines in the US to even receive one. Connecting mail services downtown at the Union Station Post Office with some of the farthest reaches of the line like San Bernardino and Redlands, the RPO helped prop up even more of PE's profits going into the 1920s. However, these profit margins were slim at best, as unlike freight or mail, passengers lost value per mile rather than maintained it. Such was the life of a public transit railway.

"Who needs a car in L.A.? We've got the best public transportation system in the world."

Pacific Electric Nos. 1001 and 1026 work a two-car local train
from Long Beach to San Pedro, 1946.
(Southern California Railway Museum)

Speaking of the passengers, SP did not neglect them as well. Seeing the possibilities of taking its passengers from its downtown LA stations to Huntington's real estate properties, the railroad invested heavily in brand-new wooden interurban cars that were bigger, faster, and more comfortable than any other in the country. The services designed for these cars, and later interurbans, varied from simple two-car local or stopping trains to five-car limiteds, and even up to seven-car ferry trains serving Wilmington and San Pedro connecting with the famous Great White Steamer fleet of Catalina Ferries.

PE also put plenty of effort into advertising both the practicality of its streetcar system and the destinations one could visit on board. At any one time, a passenger could attend a special train on New Year's Day to the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade and be whisked away on a return trip back to downtown, or they could take a regular shuttle service to Mount Lowe and ride up a mountain on board a small PE streetcar in the wilderness. One could attend a football game at Memorial Coliseum, or attend a movie premiere in Hollywood, and even go to the beach from Santa Monica all the way down to Newport Beach. A popular apocryphal story even had a child riding on the PE to Huntington Beach and asking, "If this is Mister Huntington's trolley and we're at Huntington Beach, then is that Huntington's Ocean too?"

Pacific Electric No. 1218 is seen southbound along the Pacific Coast Highway
near Huntington Beach in 1946, massive oil derricks towering ahead of it.
(Stan Kistler)

The new Hollywood Subway opens for service with
a special three-car train of Hollywood cars in 1925.
(LAist)

However, sometimes the PE had to be coerced into improving the railway for its passengers by the California Railroad Commission (CRC), and nowhere was this more evident than the famous Hollywood Subway, a 1.045 mile tunnel in LA's City West district. Prior to the Hollywood Subway, all trains bound for Glendale, Burbank, and North Hollywood were routed down Hill Street to a then-existent at-grade station. Any trains accessing Hill Street vied for street space with an ever-growing number of private motorcars and Los Angeles Railway (LARy) downtown services, and the CRC found that this was one of the most congested pieces of rail network in the entire state. After the "Hollywood Subway" was proposed in 1924 in response to the mounting pressure, it opened one year later and immediately took off eight whole rail-miles off downtown in one fell swoop. At its peak, the Hollywood Subway served over 20 million passengers a year.

Closures Spell Chaos

Pacific Electric Hollywood Car No. 5144 (originally No. 605)
races cars along the Santa Monica Air Line on the final day of
service on May 31, 1953. This was one of many places that
were backed up by road traffic.
(Ralph Cantos)

However, all was not well for the PE as it continued into the 1920s. Increased automobile ownership put the electric railway in direct competition with automobile companies and, as the railway was liable for any road maintenance where it laid tracks, this meant that PE was almost rolling out the red carpet for the car. This automobile competition also affected its railroad crossings, as the frequency of crossings on the Santa Monica Line (connecting Santa Monica with Downtown LA via Beverly Hills) meant average speeds on the line were a creeping 20 miles an hour. Worse still, even the addition of the Hollywood Subway could not stop other areas like San Pedro Street (the west-side access of the Huntington, now the Pacific Electric, Building) where enormous commuter and ferry trains clogging the streets made for an agonizing experience. After all, who wants to get stuck behind a seven-car train spanning a whole city block?

A two-car set of 800-series wooden interurban cars
blast over La Brea Avenue on the Sawtelle Line, 1938.
(Ralph Cantos)

Because of this, PE began shutting what it saw as "redundant" lines in the 1930s, with services to places like Fullerton (a major Union Pacific and Santa Fe junction town), Redondo Beach (another beach destination), and Canoga Park (a San Fernando town development in westernmost LA County) closed to often only last-minute notice. One of the most prominent closures being the Sawtelle Line to Santa Monica via Beverly Hills in 1938. Despite the fact the line was one of the most heavily-populated on the system (with 2.6 million people riding it in 1929) and the shortest route to Santa Monica, the decision came to abandon it by 1940 due to mounting pressure by the City of Los Angeles over its use of antiquated (but fast) wooden cars for service. Only a war could save more of Pacific Electric's lines from being closed.

Life During Wartime

A United States Maritime Commission train of Blimps (ex-East Bay Electric) run a
"Calship Special" to Long Beach on April 4, 1945.
(Alan Weeks, Jack Finn)

After suffering a bout of line closures in the 1930s, World War II seemed to invigorate the Pacific Electric with new importance and purpose. As gasoline rationing took effect and lucrative shipbuilders like CalShip set up shop in the Port of Long Beach and Terminal Island, the Pacific Electric was heavily depended upon to get war industry employees to their places of work on time and en masse. Altogether, the Pacific Electric dispatched over 10,000 trains from their main headquarters to Long Beach and San Pedro throughout the war years, and this necessitated leasing antiquated steel interurban cars (dubbed "Blimps") from fellow SP operations East Bay Electric and Northwestern Pacific, whose cars were requisitioned by the United States Maritime Commission for explicit use in Los Angeles. When the war ended in 1945, the Pacific Electric gained increased ridership from shipbuilding employees and ex-GIs settling down in the city and more electric cars to handle, but fate would not be kind to the Red Car.

Red Car in Retrograde

PE No. 1328, a Baldwin VO-1000 originally built
for SP, works the docks at Long Beach in 1952.
Secondhand locomotives like these were common.
(Los Angeles Public Library)

After the war, closures occurred at an almost doubled rate and the new revolution of diesel-powered freight trains weren't enough to stem PE's losses. By this time, their parent company (SP) had all but seemed to want to get out of the electric railway business after they swiftly abandoned the East Bay Electric in World War II. Some of their newest equipment were cars built in the early 1910s and, as such, began to suffer from deferred maintenance. Worse still, the city they served dutifully for almost 50 years now had fallen out of love with their streetcars. Public transit was out, and private transport was in, and it was only a matter of time before the car displaced the Red Car as king of Los Angeles.

"A construction plan of epic proportions. They're calling it, a Freeway."

Jessie Haugh (at left) and Walt Disney welcome the first
express bus of parkgoers to Disneyland on July 17, 1955.
(Metro The Source)

In 1940, the first freeway in Los Angeles opened as the Arroyo Seco Parkway, an experimental three-lane highway that connected Pasadena direct to Downtown LA via Chinatown. The closest Pacific Electric line that competed with this went further Southeast than needed to, via Fair Oaks Blvd. Spurred on by the Auto Club of Southern California, freeway development boomed beginning in 1951 and this led the Southern Pacific to finally give up on the Pacific Electric and spin off its operations in Pasadena and San Bernardino, then sell the whole thing entirely to Metropolitan Coach Lines (MCL) in 1953. The new head of PE, Jesse Haugh, had a history with Pacific City Lines (PCL) which was actually a subsidiary of the infamous National City Lines (NCL), the same transit company financed by Firestone Tires, General Motors, Standard Oil of California (now Chevron), and Phillips Petroleum. 

Metropolitan Coach Lines Blimp No. 1543, painted in LAMTA colors for promotional reasons, poses for a clear photo.
(Jack Finn)

LAMTA logo, designed in 1953.
(LAMTA, rendering by myself)

Under MCL ownership, Pacific Electric lines were spun off or whittled down until closure, making way for new road and freeway development under the guise of "beautifying" Los Angeles. Other important lines like the Glendale-Burbank (kept around for being the most modern line with a convenient subway) and Pasadena lines were closed by 1955, effectively cutting off two whole regions (Northern and Western) from passenger service. In order to keep the residents of LA from thinking that a private company was unfairly closing some of the transit lines they depended on, MCL collaborated with the city of Los Angeles in 1951 to create the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority (LAMTA, no relation to current Metro) as a shell organization to make it seem like the city had a say in its public transit, but make no mistake: This was all a private venture, through and through.

Good for One More Round Trip

6th and Main Terminal just before departure, on the
last day of Pacific Electric operations.
(Stephen Dudley)

April 9, 1961. The last day of the Pacific Electric's existence. By this time, buses had taken over its interurban operations and Southern Pacific had reduced its own city operations to local freight switching. all of Henry Huntington's real estate had found tenants and builders, and its once sprawling empire of rail had been reduced to a single line. Under a special Southern California Electric Railway Association (SC-ERA) charter, a final train of "blimp" cars departed 6th and Main Terminal at 3:45AM, bound for Long Beach. Along the way, nostalgic railfans and operators alike enjoyed what many passengers before enjoyed as the enormous interurban car rumbled down the private grand four-track "broad way" that was iconic of the Long Beach Line. 

The last train comes into Morgan Yard, a couple hours
later in Long Beach.
(Stephen Dudley)

When the last pole down went at Long Beach's Morgan Yard and the very last powerhouse was turned off, that was it. The Pacific Electric was over. Its companion, the Los Angeles Railway, only lasted another two years before it too was gone. From 1963 until 1991, no new light rail or rapid transit development occurred in Los Angeles, while the last vestiges of the Pacific Electric's infrastructure remained abandoned and its trolley cars shipped off to the Orange Empire Trolley Company in Perris, California, to live off more of their lives in preservation than in service. Thus went the largest interurban company in the world. 

Thank you for reading today's Trolley post, and watch your step as you alight on the platform. My resources today included the archives of the Pacific Electric Railway Historical Society and the archives of the Southern California Railway Museum. The trolley gifs in our posts are made by Brian Clough and can be found on his site, Banks of the Susquehanna. On Tuesday, For now, you can follow myself or my editor on Twitter, buy a shirt or sticker from our Redbubble stand, or purchase my editor's self-developed board game! It's like Ticket to Ride, but cooler! (and you get to support him through it!) Until next time, ride safe!