Trolley Thursday 12/02/21 - The Watts Local: An Examination of Los Angeles' Racial History, "White Flight", and Watts.

So today's Trolley Thursday post is actually one I'm also submitting to my "Literary Los Angeles" Class (English 2600) as part of my Final Creative Project. As such, I want to make sure the language within is cleaned up, the sources are front and center, and some of the content may not be suitable for all readers. For my topic, I chose to demonstrate my knowledge of Los Angeles history by examining its place in depictions of race relations in LA Literature like Nina Revoyr's 1993 novel, "Southland", as well as how it reflects in "Southern California: An Island on the Land", written by seminal LA area lawyer and author Carey McWilliams in 1946. I also always wanted to examine the sociology of streetcars, and how it played a role in turning the suburbs from white to multi-ethnic or vice-versa. As such, consider this a special presentation of "Twice Weekly Trolley History" and I hope you enjoy as much as my professor.

Trolley Thursday 9/23/21 - The (Very Dense) History of the LA Metro

Over one-hundred years ago, the city of Los Angeles boasted the finest interurban transit system in the world, spanning three counties with over one thousand miles of track. The Pacific Electric Railway (PE) hauled everything from daily commuters and freight to special horse-racing and Catalina ferry trains and became inexorably linked to Los Angeles' identity as it recovered from World War II. And then... it was gone.

Today, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit District (better known as the LAMTA) seeks to reinvigorate what we lost in the wake of the PE and the Los Angeles Railway (LARy) being shut down in favor of increased bus use and car-centric road design. Despite having only a tenth of PE's tracks, LA's light rail and subways continue to look ever forward to that final frontier of efficient rapid transit, and it's why we are highlighting its history on today's Trolley Thursday!

Trolley Thursday 9/9/21 - Angel's Flight

Deep in the heart of Downtown Los Angeles, among all of the modern skyscrapers and historic Beaux-Arts buildings, lies a rather unsuspecting and quite strange railway. It's the shortest public railway in Los Angeles, at just 298 feet in length, and has since been superseded by a concrete stairwell that travels right beside it up the side of Bunker Hill. And yet, it remains one of the city's most popular and well-traveled tourist attractions (if you count being "well-traveled" as "moving about 300 feet south of its original site". Yes, on today's (delayed) Trolley Thursday, we drop all pretenses and take a magnifying glass to Los Angeles' longest running "rapid" transit railway, Angel's Flight! Grab your La-La Land DVD and join us as we ascend through this unique funicular's histo-oh, we're already at the top.

Trolley Thursday 4-1-21 - The Los Angeles Railway's Diesel and Trolley Coaches

Welcome, dear readers, to a new era of Trolley-Posting! Or rather, Trolley BUS posting! In the best interest to give you the ultimate experience of what it was like to live through the Yellow Car era and show how much of a bad idea it was to get rid of Los Angeles' streetcars, we've decided to "bustitute" ourselves just like the LAMTA! I don't want to waste any more of your time, so enjoy a ride on board a nice, quiet, smooth, rubber-tyred trolley coach as we look at the Los Angeles Railway's (LARy) much-loved, much-welcomed, and much much more successful bus lines!

Trolley Tuesday 3/29/21 - Los Angeles Railway's Maintenance-of-Way Equipment

Welcome to the last Trolley Tuesday post of March! Over the past month, we've seen the history and evolution of the Los Angeles Railway (LARy) and its yellow cars, from the charming antiquity of the Type "B" Huntington Standards to the ultra-modern Type "P" PCCs that closed out another of America's greatest and most iconic street railways. The LARy couldn't have lasted as long as it did, though, without the help of a dedicated fleet of "maintenance of way" (MOW) cars that kept the wires, rails, and rolling stock happy until the final days under the LAMTA. Much like the Pacific Electric's own fleet, LARy's were all shop-built and recycled from older streetcars, so let's not waste any time and get to appreciating all of these varied cars on this, the final Trolley Tuesday of March!

Trolley Thursday 3/25/21 - The Los Angeles Railway's PCC Cars

It's quite telling that the last streetcar to operate in Los Angeles was also the one meant to save it. It was a car built from measured desperation, hoping to fight back against the menace of buses and promise citizens all over the United States that rapid transit and light rail had a chance. However, several factors affecting the Los Angeles Railway held back further development of the famous President's Conference Committee Car (or PCC Car) until the last car rolled into Division Four on March 31, 1963. Modern, timeless, and like nothing else in the Yellow Car Fleet, the role of the PCC in the company's history cannot be understated, and in order to understand just how such a newcomer greatly affected this once-mighty company, let's take this Trolley Thursday to ride aboard the PCCs!

Trolley Tuesday 3/23/21 - The Los Angeles Railway's Low-Floor Experimental Cars

The Los Angeles Railway (LARy) always set itself apart from its contemporary street railways by depending on its own shop-designed streetcars.  Prior to 1936, the only "national standard" streetcars purchased by the LARy were 70 Birney Safety Cars between 1920 and 1921 (designated LARy Type "G"). However, as the mid-1920s rolled on, the company came under pressure to show the city that they were on the cutting edge of streetcar technology. Completely against their own standards of streetcar construction, LARy and the St. Louis Car Company created two oddball classes of cars that were the last gasps of originality within the Yellow Car fleet. On today's Trolley Tuesday, hike up your fares and follow us as we talk about the LARy Type "L" and Type "M" streetcars!

Trolley Thursday 3/18/21 - The Los Angeles Railway Type "D" and "E" Funeral Cars

Street railway companies have always found different ways to gain more revenue, especially since so many of them often ran at a loss. These different revenue-makers included running dining service on their trains, owning the land their trains ran on and served, and even being made specifically for a grand entertainment center on the Great Salt Lake. Due to Henry Huntington's ownership of the Los Angeles Railway (LARy) basically funding itself, the company never saw need to do anything else but be a local downtown streetcar. That is, until death came knocking at its door with a simple proposition. On today's Trolley Thursday, you foolish mortals will enjoy a ride (not your final one) on board two of the LARy's most specifically-built cars on their fleet, and how the "Descanso" and "Paraiso" lived, died, and lived again.

Trolley Tuesday 3/16/21 - The Los Angeles Railway Type "H" Steel City Cars

Over the course of this blog, we've tracked the steady pattern of streetcar, interurban, and rapid transit companies switching from wooden car construction to steel construction. Most companies shifted during the 1910s, following improved methods of steel casting and construction. Early steel streetcar designs were some of the most iconic of the of the twentieth century, from Blimps, to Hollywoods, and even New York City subway cars. The Los Angeles Railway (LARy) was one of the latest adopters of steel cars, their first arrived from the St. Louis Car Company in 1921. However, these cars are no less important or significant in the Yellow Car roster, and so today's Trolley Tuesday will be spend discussing the wonderful, the stalwart, and the iconic LARy Type "H" steel city cars. 

Trolley Thursday 3/11/21 - The Los Angeles Railway Type "C" Sowbellies

One thing that set the Los Angeles Railway (LARy) apart from the Pacific Electric (PE) was a relative lack of streetcar nicknames. No cars were ever nicknamed after the areas they worked in (as they were expected to work on every single line of the system), nor did they have any notable eccentricities that set them apart enough to warrant a nickname. However, aside from the "termite squasher", there was one streetcar that did get a nickname and it turned out to be one of the most controversial, and certainly the most hated, streetcar type on the Los Angeles Railway. On today's Trolley Thursday, let's let the flanges squeal as we look at the history behind one of the LARy's most unique (and most maligned) streetcars, the Type "C"s, or "sowbellies" to shop crews.

Trolley Tuesday 3/9/21 - The Los Angeles Railway Type A "Maggies" and Type B "Huntington Standards"

Henry Huntington prided his electric lines to have a bit of familiarity and class among the citizens of Los Angeles, and so his shop crews always strove for some kind of standardization. The biggest factor in standardization was the iconic "Huntington Standard" window design, a five-window front with curved corner glass that not only was quite complex to manufacture, but provided a uniquely-refined air to both the Pacific Electric (PE) and the Los Angeles Railway (LARy) that no other streetcar company could match. On the LARy, the "Huntington Standard" design was found on their standard line of wooden "California Cars", the Type "A" (also known as the "Maggies") and the Type "B" (Huntington Standards), of which hundreds were seen rolling through the hills and valleys of the City of Angels at all times. On today's Trolley Tuesday, let's take a balmy ride aboard a Huntington Standard as we appreciate these fine antique cars.

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!

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!