Trolley Thursday 3/3/21 - The Los Angeles Railway Offices, Shops, and Facilities

We talk so much about the different kinds of streetcars in Los Angeles, both on this month and last month, but we never find the time to talk about the facilities where these streetcars get serviced, or even built. Thankfully, due to their resourcefulness (and unwillingness to spend money thanks to Mr. Huntington's financial strategies), the Los Angeles Railway's South Park Shops filled the demand for an all-in-one car maintenance and construction facility, and were able to birth some of the railway's most iconic passenger and maintenance-of-way cars. The Division Carhouses are also ones to not overlook, as without them who would even give these innocent trolleys a home? On today's Trolley Thursday, let's take a peek into the facilities that made the LARy's operations possible!

  

Los Angeles Railway Building

The Los Angeles Building, showing its North Side, calls for "HELP WANTED" in 1940.
(Metro Library and Archives)

Professional stunt pilot Frank Clarke prepares to use the in-progress
LA Railway building as a runway while filming the 1921 silent
film, "Stranger Than Fiction", on December 14, 1920.
(Los Angeles Times)

The Los Angeles Railway Building at 1060 South Broadway was never much a destination for the system's passengers like the Pacific Electric (PE) Building, nor was it ever a main terminal hub for the railway itself. Built in 1922, the slender ten-story Beaux-Arts building was intended to house the LARy's accounting and executive offices, but by most surviving accounts, Mr. Huntington never had an office there after the Great Merger of 1911; he preferred to keep his own office at the PE Building instead. Following the purchase of the LA Railway by National City Lines (NCL), then the operation by the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority (LAMTA), the building was taken over by a garment manufacturer, then a candy shop. 

The Los Angeles Railway Building in the modern day,
now the Hoxton Downtown LA hotel. Definitely
not one if you like some elbow room.
(Urbanize LA)

After a period of languishing, abandoned and empty, the building was once again revitalized by British hotel chain Hoxton as part of their international chain of hotels, becoming the 174-room Hoxton Downtown LA boutique hotel. Despite its small size (seriously, the rooms are pretty cramped with the largest being 301 square feet) and European proclivities, the Los Railway Building continues to stand tall on the corner of 11th and Broadway as a subtle symbol of the Yellow Car's continued existence in Los Angeles.

The South Park Shops

LARy's first carhouse in 1899, showing the original horse-drawn tower cars.
(Metro Library and Archives) 

While the LA Railway's network of terminals and stations were not immediately centralized, their shop facilities sure were. Originally, the PE had planned to consolidate both PE and LARy maintenance at their 7th and Alameda Shops, but this quickly proved too impractical so LARy's first permanent carhouse (which originally opened in the late 1890s, later Division One) began filling in as the main maintenance facility for the Yellow Cars. This, too, proved inadequate for the rapidly-growing system and, with a steadily rising fleet of electrified horsecars and new streetcars, Henry Huntington fell back on the one thing he knew how to do best: buy land.

Los Angeles Railway Division Two carhouse at left,
with the South Park Shops at right, looking north.
(Metro Library and Archives)

Huntington purchased a whole city block bordering 53rd and 54th Streets (north and south) and South Park Avenue (now Towne Avenue) and San Pedro Street (east and west, respectively), on the southern reaches of Downtown Los Angeles. Before redevelopment of the South Park area in 1901, it was filled with flophouses and brothels, and Huntington paid an impressive sum of $300,000 ($8.9 million in 2021) to construct the shop, which opened in 1906. The basic facilities included with the original South Park Shops were a carpentry department (where wooden car bodies and frames would either be repaired, refurbished, or completely built from scratch), a blacksmith's shop (where all metal tools and parts could be forged), the maintenance department (where light to heavy maintenance was undertaken), a 36-track paint shop with a transfer table, and a large carhouse that became known as Division Two.

The Los Angeles Railway South Park Shops at its peak,
looking west. The center street is 54th Street.
(Metro Library and Archives)

Between 1920 to 1921, the shops expanded further across 54th Street and was now bounded by 55th Street to the south, giving the entire facility 13 acres to play with. This new expansion included a steel mill for part and tool manufacturing, as well as a 21-track body shop for all collision repair. Los Angeles Railway maintenance mandates were now also split into three levels, "A" (light, daily inspections), "B" (medium-level inspections and maintenance done every 12th "A" inspection), and "C" (light overhauls to replace any and all worn parts every 30,000 miles). This expansion also allowed the Los Angeles Railway to dabble in their own experimental and rebuilt designs as their gauge limitations (being only Cape Gauge) meant that a not-insignificant number of their rolling stock were all rebuilds or designs bodged from spares. Some sixty cars were built fresh from South Park Shops, but in the interest of keeping things consistent and non-repetitive, I'll save that information when I talk about the cars themselves.

We'll get to the cars, soon. Don't worry! This LARy
company photo shows many Type K 1300s being 
constructed in the new body shop.
(Metro Library and Archives)

What Remains

Buses and trolleys share shed space at South Park in 1934.
(Metro Library and Archives)

The Division Two Carhouse closed to the trolleys in 1932 due to diminishing rail traffic and its poor location nowhere near any significant commercial or residential center in Los Angeles. The next significant change to the shops wouldn't come until 1944, when the incoming National City Lines decided the shops were too big for their needs. The older half of the property, north of 54th Street, were sold off and the rest were now consolidated into the two long buildings making up the southern half of the property. Trolley buses also began taking up residence at South Park Shops, often being maintained right next to the streetcars, which continued as streetcar service around Los Angeles dwindled. 

A South-west view of the former LA Railway South Park Shops
in 2012, with the South LA Wetlands Park at center and the 
Dr. Maya Angelou Community High School at right.
(KPCC)

The shops passed into LAMTA ownership in 1958, and after all streetcar service in LA ended in 1963, the South Park Shops continued as the major heavy repair facility of the LAMTA (later Los Angeles Rapid Transit District or LA RTD, then the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority or LACMTA) until 2012, when the land was repurposed into the South Los Angeles Wetlands Park, an artificial natural area meant to promote "green spaces" and reclaim industrialized areas. The enormous 21-track body shop that was kept by LA Metro for bus maintenance was included in the new park, with the intention of turning it into an "education center and railway museum". The area north of 54th Street that was once the old South Park Shops now makes up the Dr. Maya Angelou Community High School, which first opened in 2011. Not bad, considering it's named after a famous black "motormanette" on San Francisco's Market Street Railway.

  

LA Railway Carhouses

A Los Angeles Railway Type B "Huntington Standard" poses
outside the Division One Carhouse in 1909.
(Metro Library & Archives)

The interior of Division 3, one of the largest buildings
on the LARy System, also showing off its pit track.
This company photo was from 1938.
(Metro Library and Archives)

LARy Divisions One and Two were not the only carhouses maintained by the Yellow Cars, as there were actually five of them throughout their 60-year history all over Downtown Los Angeles. All but Division Two served a specific region of the LA Railway system,  with Division Two functioning more as shop storage. Division One on 6th and Central was the main carhouse for all through-Downtown lines, more or less a hub for light maintenance and storage than anything passenger. Division Three was the main carhouse for the Highland Park District, and was also known as the "Avenue 28 Carhouse", handling all cars assigned to the "5" or "W" Lines. Division Five was located at 54th Street and 2nd Avenue and was the largest of all Divisions as it handled all Western and Southern lines as far down as Hawthorne and as far north as Vineyard Junction. Division Four proved to be the longest-lived division, despite being the smallest, as it was originally built to serve the Los Angeles Traction Company, then the Los Angeles Interurban (a Henry Huntington enterprise that was a shell company for the PE), before being divested in the Great Merger to the LARy in 1911. 

LA Transit Lines Division 5 in 1944, with incoming GM 
"Old Look" buses coming to replace the rows of Type B
"Huntington Standards" and Type H/K "Steel Cars".
(Ralph Cantos, PERYHS)

A modern day view of LA Metro Arthur Winston
Division 5 busyard, with the big maintenance building
being original to the original.
(Google Maps)

All of these carhouses were enormous affairs, ranging from fifteen to twenty tracks and going back two-to-ten cars deep. This was enough to host all the cars necessary for every line on the LARy, and it was not uncommon to see one car go from being stored at one division carhouse to another. After the closure of Division Two to shrinking traffic, the others closed in short order due to intense "bustitution" starting with Division One in 1949. Divisions Three and Five closed in 1955 following the cessation of service on the Highland Park lines (Three) and bustitution (Five), leaving only Division Four to handle the remaining five PCC car lines (J, P, R, S, V) until 1963. After that, Division Four was demolished due to one of Los Angeles' "urban renewal" programs and is now the site of the Los Angeles Convention Center along Figueroa Street and Pico Boulevard. LA Metro continues to operate Divisions One, Three, and Five as bus maintenance facilities, with Five being named after longtime (and I do mean longtime) Metro Employee of the Century Arthur Winston, with all three retaining (though heavily rebuilt) the original concrete carhouses.

LAMTA Division 3 Busyard following 1960, with no trace of tracks to be seen.
(LA Metro Library & Archives)

Vernon Yard

Ex-LAMTA PCC No. 3083 gets spanked with a stinger
as it's loaded onto a truck to be taken to Cairo, Egypt,
for another working life, 1963.
(Alan Weeks, PERYHS)

The last facility worth mentioning was also the last railway yard maintained by the LA Railway under the LAMTA in 1963. Vernon Yard was primarily home to LARy' "Maintenance of Way" division, and as such it was full of cranes, rail grinders, and tower cars that helped keep the entire system in tip-top shape. The yard was located at the intersection of Vernon and Santa Fe in South Central, and following the end of streetcar operations, all of the remaining PCC cars were stored at Vernon Yard, awaiting their various fates. While a few were purchased by preservationists (including three PCCs and several pieces of maintenance vehicles by the Southern California Railway Museum of Perris, CA), most of the PCCs here were eventually scrapped or sold to a new operator in Cairo, Egypt. The LAMTA later used Vernon Yard to store out-of-service buses under the LA RTD, but today the site is a paper mill and industrial distribution wholesaler.

  

Thank you for reading today's Trolley post, and watch your step as you alight on the platform. My resources today include "The Yellow Cars of Los Angeles" by Jim Walker and Ira L. Swett, the archives of the Pacific Electric Railway Historical Society, and the Metro Library and Archives. The trolley gifs in our posts are made by myself. On Tuesday, we begin our LA Railway roster with the Type B Huntington Standards and Type C Sowbellies! 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!