Trolley Tuesday 2/2/21 - Early Pacific Electric Cars, 1902-1911

Whether Henry E. Huntington liked it or not, he was similar to his rival (E.H. Harriman) in a lot of ways. Both were interested in cornering and monopolizing a single market (the entire western US railway system for Harriman, all of Los Angeles' real estate and mass transit electric railways for Huntington), but another lesser-known similarity between the two men were their need for standardization. Harriman had his own design of passenger cars and steam locomotives between the Union Pacific (UP) and the Southern Pacific (SP), while Huntington's own consistent style came from the 5-window designs found on many of his streetcars built by the St. Louis Car Company and J.G. Brill of Philadelphia. On the first Trolley Tuesday of February, we begin our look into the Pacific Electric Fleet by looking at the cars that came before the Great Merger of 1911.