This is slide EBC550 in our internal filing system.
Early Ektachrome film turned out to have unstable dyes. Only the red layer has fared well over the years, and as the other colors have faded, many of these slides have turned red. However, using modern technology, it is possible in many instances to make the colors look normal, as we have done here in our first picture. That is the restored version of the image, and the other pictures show it unrestored.
If the winning bidder wants it, I would be glad to provide a copy of my restored scan.
The famous red cars of the Pacific Electric interurban ran their last on April 9, 1961. Along with the demise of the Chicago North Shore and Milwaukee in 1963, this is widely regarded as the end of the Interurban Era in America.
The PE line from LA to Long Beach was the last remaining one. It was also the first to be put back into service in 1990 as part of a new rapid transit system.
From the Wikipedia:
The Pacific Electric Railway Company, nicknamed the Red Cars, was a privately owned mass transit system in Southern California consisting of electrically powered streetcars, interurban cars, and buses and was the largest electric railway system in the world in the 1920s. Organized around the city centers of Los Angeles and San Bernardino, it connected cities in Los Angeles County, Orange County, San Bernardino County and Riverside County.
The system shared dual gauge track with the 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) narrow gauge Los Angeles Railway, "Yellow Car," or "LARy" system on Main Street in downtown Los Angeles (directly in front of the 6th and Main terminal), on 4th Street, and along Hawthorne Boulevard south of downtown Los Angeles toward the cities of Hawthorne, Gardena, and Torrance.
The Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority was established in 1951 to study the possibility of establishing a publicly owned monorail line running north from Long Beach to downtown Los Angeles and then west to Panorama City in the San Fernando Valley. In 1954, the agency's powers were expanded to allow it to propose a more extensive regional mass-transit system. In 1957, it was given the authority to operate transit lines.
In 1958, the California state government through its Public Utility Commission took over the remaining and most popular lines from Metropolitan Coach Lines. The MTA also purchased the remaining streetcar "Yellow Car" lines of the successor of the Los Angeles Railway, then called Los Angeles Transit Lines. LARy/LATL had been purchased from the Huntington estate by National City Lines in 1945. The MTA started operating all lines as a single system on March 3, 1958.
The Los Angeles-to-Long Beach passenger rail line served the longest, from July 4, 1902, until April 9, 1961. It was both the first and last interurban passenger line of the former Pacific Electric system. It was replaced by the Motor Coach 36f ("F" representing Freeway Flyer) route. The line, which used long stretches of open country running on private right-of-way, was later utilized when the Southern California RTD was designing and building the Metro Blue Line light rail line. The Blue Line, the first modern mass transit line in Los Angeles since the discontinuation of the Red Car service, was first opened in 1990.
Formed in 1951, LAMTA's original mandate was to do a feasibility study for a monorail line which would have connected Long Beach with the Panorama City district in the San Fernando Valley via Downtown Los Angeles.
The agency's powers were expanded in 1954, authorizing it to study and propose an extensive regional transit system. In 1957, another expansion of the agency's powers authorized it to operate transit lines, and it subsequently purchased the bus and streetcar lines then being operated by Metropolitan Coach Lines, which had taken over passenger service of the Pacific Electric Railway in 1953, as well as the bus and streetcar lines of the Los Angeles Transit Lines, successor to the Los Angeles Railway. Both companies, as well as MCL subsidiary Asbury Rapid Transit System, were acquired for $34 million (equivalent to $372 million in 2022). The MTA began operating the lines on March 3, 1958, and continued to do so until the agency was taken over by the Southern California Rapid Transit District on November 5, 1964.
During the MTA's tenure, the last remaining rail transit lines in Los Angeles were abandoned and replaced with bus service, the last former Pacific Electric line in April 1961, and the last former Los Angeles Railway lines in 1963.
This slide is being sold as-is, in the condition as shown in our listing photographs. It does not include any copyright.
The proceeds from this auction will help fund the Trolley Dodger blog (www.thetrolleydodger.com), including research for our next transit history book.
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