Pacific Electric Red Cars

by Jim Walker

Overview

Of the rail lines created at the turn of the 20th century, in order to build interurban links through Southern California communities around metropolitan Los Angeles, the Pacific Electric grew to be the most prominent of all. The Pacific Electric Railway is synonymous with Henry Edwards Huntington, the capitalist with many decades of railroad experience, who formed the "P. E." and expanded it as principal owner for nearly its first decade. Huntington sold his PE holdings to the giant Southern Pacific Railroad in 1910, and the following year the SP absorbed nearly every electric line in the fourcounty area around Los Angeles in the "Great Merger" into a "new" Pacific Electric. Founded in 1901 and terminated in 1965, Pacific Electric was known as the "World's Great Interurban."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780738546889
Publisher:	Arcadia Publishing SC
Publication date:	02/07/2007
Series:	Images of Rail
Pages:	128
Sales rank:	672,960
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.31(d)

About the Author

This compendium uses the superb collection of vintage photographs housed at the Dorothy Peyton Gray Transportation Library at the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority as well as other sources. Jim Walker, the author or editor of more than 40 railway books, was a founder of the Orange Empire Railway Museum at Perris, California, which preserves many cars, locomotives, and memorabilia from the PE. He is the archivist/curator of Metro's library.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments     6
Introduction     7
Before Pacific Electric     9
Founding of Pacific Electric     15
The Great Merger, Opening of the Longest Line: 1911-1920     23
The Automobile Age Begins: 1921-1930     31
The Great Depression and More Buses: 1931-1940     39
Wartime and Postwar Developments: 1941-1950     55
More Buses, New Company, and the End of Red Cars: 1951-1960     87
PE's Last Years: 1961-1965     103
Postlude and Gallery     107