Trolley Tuesday 3/2/21 - The Los Angeles Railway

While the Pacific Electric (PE) gets the glory of being able to roam up and down Southern California as its premiere interurban railway, there was always the shadow of the Yellow Car following it all through downtown. The Los Angeles Railway (LARy) actually predated the PE by a full decade, but that fact did not restrict the "Yellow Cars" from growing alongside their "Red Car" counterparts (and even outlasting them by two years!). On this month's Trolley Tuesday, let us appreciate the history and the cars of one of Los Angeles' most underrated streetcar lines as we ride down to Downtown on the LARy!

  

In the Beginning

The Los Angeles Railway logo from 1900 to 1944, showing a
Mission-inspired bell tower flanked by wings of electrical bolts.
(Unknown Author) 

An Electric Rapid Transit Co. (which eventually became
the Belt Line Railway Company) car in an 1893 view.
(ERHA)

As we talked about earlier this year, the Los Angeles Railway (LARy) was originally formed by a multitude of horsecar and cable car lines that ran through what was Los Angeles' old downtown core. These street railways fell under the control of land booster and traction magnate Moses Sherman, who founded the Belt Line Railway (BLR) in the fall of 1890 with his brother-in-law Eli P. Clarke to make electrifying Los Angeles' streetcars a little easier. With significant backing from bondholders and other financiers, Sherman and Clarke bought up all of the horsecars and cable car lines they could, eventually owning 90% of the entire Los Angeles streetcar system at the time. In the process of owning these lines, Sherman retained the narrow 3-foot-6-inch "Cape" gauge operated by some of Los Angeles' cable car lines at the time as it was much cheaper to retain the gauge and rip up the cables. This set the pattern of the LARy to soon come, as these new electric lines were dubbed the Los Angeles Consolidated Electric Railway, or LACE.

An early Los Angeles Railway single-truck "California Car" with trailer on
the Downey Avenue Line in 1897.
(Metro Library and Archive)

Circa 1895, an electrified California Car is travelling
West on 1st Street at the Boyle Hotel.
(Water and Power Archives)

By 1895, both Sherman and Clarke had run afoul of their bondholders due to any lack of financial compensation and were forced out of the company. The coup was due to many reasons, but aside from receiving no shares of the company profits, the bondholders were also jealous that Sherman was choosing to build his new Los Angeles & Pasadena interurban line nowhere near the downtown core. The company was reorganized into the more familiar Los Angeles Railway that same year, and in 1898, land developer and railway executive Henry E. Huntington purchased the system and set about finishing the total electrification of the line. Huntington's goal for the LARy was to gain a foothold in local real estate by building out the Downtown Core of Bunker Hill, Angelino Park, Temple Street, and East Los Angeles across the river, and he would accomplish this rather quickly.

The Yellow Cars Stretch Out

A later picture of the Los Angeles Railway and Pacific Electric
PCCs on 7th Street. The PE PCC is Pullman, while the LATL
PCC is St. Louis Car Company.
(Ralph Cantos, PERYHS)

After Huntington founded the PE in 1900, the two companies seemed to work in tandem with each other. Both maintained a service corridor through Main Street and San Pedro Street (leading to one of the few dual-gauge streetcar systems in America) and the LARy functioned as the Metro Local to the PE's Metro Rapid express lines. The LARy was even able to connect with the far-out Los Angeles & Redondo Railway, which was then still Cape gauge, for the annual company picnic in Redondo Beach. Huntington also helped standardize the fleet of ex-horsecars and trailers he inherited from the LACE, replacing them with enormous double-trucked "California Cars" with their distinctive 5-window design, leading them to be named the "Huntington Standards." 

Following the Great Merger of 1911, Huntington maintained complete control over the Los Angeles Railway while Southern Pacific got his precious, all-important Pacific Electric. The two parties agreed that the Los Angeles Railway could not expand out of Downtown Los Angeles and interfere with any PE service outside of city limits, but that did not stop Huntington from reaching out to the outer LA suburbs to sell more land for residences and businesses. Neighborhoods like Highland Park, Exposition Park, Echo Park, and even Huntington Park all credit their growth to the little Yellow Cars and Huntington became a very rich man because of this. Even after his death on May 23, 1927, Huntington continued to maintain personal control over the Los Angeles Railway and all 642 miles of its city lines.

Lines and Regions

A map of the Los Angeles Railway, 1930.
Click here to see it in full.
(Unknown Author)

Los Angeles Railway's lines were made up of twenty-five lines, with eighteen "lettered" lines and seven "numbered" lines. Of the lettered lines, only letters "C", "E", "Q", "T", and "X-Y-Z" were skipped over, and these represented most of LARy's short-distance lines through Downtown. More often than not, three lettered lines shared a single street, with Vermont Street handling up to five different services between Downey Road to the Southeast and Monroe Avenue to the Northern. The worst sections were on Broadway and Main, which functioned as the main artery for LARy cars and, as such, were almost always clogged with traffic going into the 1920s.

After 1921, LARy also began construction of new, farther reaching routes that almost count as an interurban. The longest, the "5" line from Eagle Rock to Hawthorne via Downtown, was a staggering 24 miles long and connected Northeast Los Angeles with the farthest extreme of the Downtown area near the Municipal Airport.

An unknown LATL "Huntington Standard" races the 
Santa Fe's "Super Chief" along Marmion Way on a 
1954 Fan Trip on the "W" Line, heading North.
(Metro Library and Archive)

If nothing else, the LARy's biggest strength was its ability to connect people from all over the outer reaches of Downtown with important train services. Along the W Line in Highland Park, the LARy connected to the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe along Marmion Way and built up one of LA's oldest suburbs, while further bus extensions out where the trolleys couldn't go got other Angelinos moving. By far the oddest fact about the LARY's lines was just how many cemeteries it connected to. At its peak, and while it still ran funeral streetcar service, LARy connected to six different cemeteries around the city's outskirts. Though funeral streetcars seemed absolutely morbid to modern sensibilities, it was just one of many ways the LARy was eager to make money any way they could. Gotta earn that side hustle, after all.

Streamliners in Wartime

In 1936, the newest PCC in Los Angeles joins one of
the oldest cars on the roster at the South Park Shops.
(Rails West)

After Huntington's death, the power of his vast estate and his descendants helped keep the streetcars afloat following the Great Depression. By this time, the line was heavily invested in steel streetcars and were looking to modernize them in both paint schemes and in "one-man" operation to eliminate the cost of paying conductors. This desire for absolute efficiency and cost-effectiveness culminated in 1936, when LARy was one of four companies to get the first PCC cars delivered from St. Louis Car Company. Such was the success of the PCCs that, in the middle of World War II, Los Angeles was the only city to receive new-built streetcars in 1942, circumventing wartime restrictions on steel, rubber, and copper. Why were they able to do this? Well, the LARy was so important to the War Effort at the time, as gas rationing made it impossible for people to commute in any way apart from the streetcars. LARy experienced its highest ridership ever at this time, but trouble was on the horizon.

SOLD!

Los Angeles Transit Lines logo under NCL.
(Unknown Author)

A Brill-ACF trolley bus gets a nice wash through the carriage wash
as another waits their turn. Both are assigned to the "3" line.
(ERHA)

Despite the high ridership during wartime, the Huntington Estate could not stem the loss of money that came from running a public transit system. With its profits at a severe loss, the Estate sold the LARy to American City Lines, Inc, in 1944, a Chicago subsidiary of National City Lines (NCL). Under the NCL banner, the LARy was renamed to Los Angeles Transit Lines (LATL) and trolley bus services were implemented across the streetcar system on most of the numbered lines. These trolley buses were said to be the "transition" from dependency on streetcars to buses, and these forty units were originally intended for NCL's other system, the Key System in Oakland. Conversion of streetcar lines to bus lines really began in earnest following World War II, and even some of the newest PCC cars had to fight for dominance against the rubber-tired tyrants.

Bring Out the Crying Streetcar

LARy "Sowbelly" No. 90 is the last car to run on the "U" Line
from Nevin to West Adams. This line closed on August 3, 1947.
(Ralph Cantos, PERYHS)

The "Crying Trolley", LAMTA 3002, is spotted running
one of the last fantrips in Vernon on the J Line.
(Alan Weeks, Metro Library)

The 1950s were not good to the LARy, as they felt the oncoming trend of automobiles much harder than the Pacific Electric did. With severe cutbacks and outright closures plaguing the system, it was no surprise that all but five lines (J, P, R, S, and V) were closed by 1956 and most of the older steel and wooden stock was sent for scrap. Some were even publicly mocked before scrapping, as demonstrated through the abominable "Kilroy Car". That same year, 46 steel cars from the early 1920s were sold to Seoul and Pusan, South Korea, for continued use there, and the LARy was now an all-PCC system. They remained sequestered on their downtown lines with the monotony only broken up by the occasional home-built maintenance car or railfan charter. Even after the Pacific Electric ended in April 1961, the Los Angeles Transit Lines (now under the auspices of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority, or LAMTA) soldiered on for two more years until March 31, 1963, when Los Angeles officially gave up on its streetcars. From that day until July 14, 1990, no rapid transit train ran in Los Angeles and the bus was king.

LAMTA Division 20 Carhouse on February 25, 1963, showing
the different generations of PCC cars owned by the LAMTA at the time.
(Metro Library)

Employee of the Century

Arthur Winston sitting in a GM "New Look" bus he would have
worked on on the LATL/LAMTA, as photographed by Annie O'Niell in 2006.
(Annie O'Niell)

However, despite the end of the LARy and the end of all trolleys altogether, one remnant of the mighty Yellow Cars kept working right up until just before his death on April 13, 2006. Arthur Winston was an African-American man originally born in the Oklahoma Territory on March 22, 1906, and after working an early job picking cotton, he and his family moved to California in 1918. After graduating high school in 1922, Winston began working under the LARy in its division carhouses before moving up the ranks to become an operator by 1926. However, due to the color of his skin, Winston was denied the opportunity to be a bus driver and he quit in protest. He eventually returned to the LARy in January 1934, and he never really stopped.

Arcola Philpott (1913-1991), the first
African-American "motormanette) on
the LA Railway.
(Metro Library)

Winston's trailblazing on the Los Angeles Railway paved the way for other prominent African-American employees to rise up in the ranks and eventually earn their operator's credentials. It started in 1944, when Mrs. Arcola Philpott became the first black "motormanette" on the LARy, along with nine other black motormen (Louis S. Bernard, Hoyt A. Brown, Percy B. Hill, Roosevelt Mills Butler, James Mitchell, W.B. Jones, E.M. Morris, W.S.A. Weary, and James Womack) shortly after. At some point or another, all of their cars or buses were serviced by Mr. Winston, who remained with the LARy even after it became the LATL, then the LAMTA, and then the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority (LACMTA) in 1993. Arthur Winston really was like nobody else on the LARy, and the man made every effort to keep his life plain and humble. He drove the same car, never smoked or drank, and always got to work on time and did the best he could. The only sick day he ever took in 72 years of working in the LA Transit Sector was in 1989, when his wife of 64 years, Frances Smith Winston, passed away at age 82. 

Four of LARy's first black motormen: W.B. Jones, W.S.A. Weary, Percy B. Hill, and L.S. Bernard.
(Metro Library)

Arthur Winston formally signs
his retirement papers on his 100th
birthday, March 22, 2006.
(Metro Library)

In 1996, then-President Bill Clinton awarded Winston with the "Employee of the Century" award from the US Department of Labor, the only recipient of the award so far. He continued his work as a Division Busyard Supervisor in the meantime, often entertaining old co-workers or friends with fond memories whenever they would visit his busyard, which was renamed the "Arthur Winston" Division 5 Busyard on January 23, 2004. On his 100th birthday, March 22, 2006, Arthur Winston formally retired from the LACMTA and had planned to continue visiting his family and living life, but he passed away just a month later. He will be missed, as both an important figure in transit history and as an inspiration to the power of living humbly and having a solid work ethic carrying one's self through their whole life.

   

Thank you for reading today's Trolley post, and watch your step as you alight on the platform. My resources today included "The Yellow Cars of Los Angeles" by Jim Walker and Ira L. Swett, the archives of the Pacific Electric Railway Historical Society, the archives and collections of the Southern California Railway Museum, and a video by Metro Los Angeles on Arthur Winston. The trolley gifs in our posts are made by myself and can be distributed on request. On Thursday, we look at the mighty LARy South Park Shops and get our first introduction to the fleet of Yellow Cars. 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!