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Lines of Pacific Electric Southern District Soft Cover Interiurbans Vol 17 #1
Lines of Pacific Electric Southern District Soft Cover
Interurbans Vol 17 #1 April 1959 Pages 74-120 make up this volume. Complete.
Lines of Pacific Electric Southern District
Soft Cover/Stapled
Copyright 1959
CONTENTS
Interurbans
Lines of Pacific Electric
Los Angeles terminal District
Butte Street Yard
8th Street Yard
Four Tracks
Watts Line
Long Beach Line
San Pedro Via Dominguez Line
Long Beach-San Pedro Line
Fairbanks Ave. Yard
Morgan Ave. Yard
Terminal Island Line
Newport- Balboa Line
La Bolsa Line
Santa Ana Line
Santa Ana-Orange Line
Santa Ana-Huntington Beach Line
Whittier Line
La Habra-Yorba Linda Fullerton
Redondo Via Gardena Line
San Pedro Via Torrance Line
El Segundo Line
SOUTHERN DISTRICT
The Pacific Electric Southern District was the last of its three major districts to take shape; it has also outlasted the others which perhaps is a tribute to its builders. For the Southern District was the one part of PE which was entirely the work of Henry E. Huntington and Epes Randolph. There is in existence Randolph's own map whereon he sketched (back in 1901) his ideas of where Southern District lines should go; so well did Randolph understand the topography and growth factors of the countryside between Los Angeles and its southern beaches that the PE lines followed his sketch exactly---and none can argue that Randolph erred in a single instance on any of the lines he laid out.
The Southern District was not the biggest district, nor did it tap glamourous cities known the world over. The South perhaps can be likened to a laborer if the North is an office worker or citrus grower and the West a motion picture extra or small business man. In freight, the South was head-and-shoulders above the others; its tonnage trains to and from the harbor were in a class by themselves. In passenger, the South was not nearly as impressive; it had the Watts Local (high in numbers carried, low in revenue) and the Long Beach Line (on good beach days, spectacular).
The South was the only district of the Big Three to have been a standard-gauge operation from the beginning. It was the Long Beach Line which was the guinea pig, and its success with high speed interurban cars made the changeover of previously constructed 3'6. gauge lines to 4'8" inevitable.
The PE rail lines comprising the Southern District were: La Habra-Yorba Linda-Fullerton
Long Beach-Seal Beach * Long Beach Line Long Beach Local Lines * Long Beach-San Pedro Newport-Balboa Redondo via Gardena Redondo-Hawthorne-El Segundo Santa Ana Santa Ana-Huntington Beach Santa Ana-Orange San Pedro via Dominguez San Pedro via Torrance San Pedro Local Lines * Watts Whittier
*Not covered herein.
In this work, we have taken these lines geographically from 6th & Main Station. The Long Beach Line, the backbone of the South, is divided into three parts: Los Angeles Terminal District, Four Tracks, and remainder. The coastal lines are handled next, then the interior lines south of the Four Tracks and finally those west of the Four Tracks. Thus general services are considered in compatible groupings and the reader is not commanded to jump his attention from one area to another some distance removed.
Lines of the Southern District ranged from the spectacular Four Tracks to the remote and lonesome Santa Ana-Huntington Beach streak of rust---from the throbbing San Pedro via Dominguez major artery to the Wandering La Habra-Fullerton capillary. On the South there was variety galore: heavy, thundering six-car Catalina Specials, and the peripatetic jigger that ran when it pleased between Torrance Shops and downtown Torrance. There was the Watts Local---on a par with the glittering Hollywood Blvd. Line of the 'Western District insofar as equipment was concerned, but quite a contrast otherwise. And there was the busy Long Beach-San Pedro Line, industriously playing out its skein of days far removed from 6th & Main. The South had the seaside Newport-Balboa Line whose average speed of 30.1 miles per hour was second on the entire system to the San Bernardino Line's 30.6; the South also had the Santa Ana-Orange Line with speeds considerably less.
The various parts of Special 16 should be read in conjunction with Special 21---"Passenger Service of Pacific Electric., To avoid repetition, we have not touched upon Operation herein; in each instance, the reader is referred to Special 21.
All lines had certain common historical developments: In 1953, PE sold its passenger business to Metropolitan Coach Lines, and in 1958 MCL sold out to the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority. LAMTA is committed to an eventual rapid transit network, and at present writing is continuing the Long Beach Line as a rail operation while studying possible use of it as the testing ground for modern lightweight high speed train operation.
Be future developments as they may, it is an historical fact that the Long beach Line has outlived every other interurban line west of Chicago. It, with its companion Watts Local Line, is the only oasis in the rubber tire-asphalt desert into which so-called progress has converted interurban travel in the west in this enlightened age.
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