Pacific Electric Red Cars (CA) (Images of Rail) (Paperback)

by Jim Walker (Author), The Dorothy Peyton Gray Transportation Library (Author) "Like many other cities in the United States, Los Angeles began rail-borne transit first with horse cars in 1874, then with cable cars, and then..." (more)
Key Phrases: box motors, bus operation, Courtesy Metro Library, Courtesy Craig Rasmussen Collection, Los Angeles (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
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.

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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing (February 12, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0738546887
• ISBN-13: 978-0738546889
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #680,034 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Must have for Traction fans, March 24, 2007

By	C. Norman Walters (Kansas) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is done by the Historian for METRO in Los Angeles and makes liberal use of Pacific Electric original files and photos which are a part of METRO'S historic archives. It is an outstanding book. and a must have for trolley, interurban, and light rail fans.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Review Of A Very Good Pacific Electric Book, August 12, 2007

By	Vincent C. Reiner Jr. "Pacific Electric 9300" (New York NY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Although there's a plethora of books written about PE, I would recomend this title for those who are uninitated to Pacific Electric.
This book gives a very fact ridden synopsis of one of the US's busiest passenger and freight hauler.
Thew ran 9300 (!) scheduled passenger trains and had a large LCL box motor operation. Yhat's in addition to 100's of electrically/steam/diesel hauled freight trains throughout the LA Valley area.

All this ran on 900 miles of right of way, including the famous Watts 4 track raceway and the subway terminal caddy corner to the elevated PE Terminal in the above mentioned terminal building.

Many foreign car manufacturers use the terminal building as a "modern" backdrop for their car ads. Talk about longevity!!!

Photos run from excellent to very good and still sharp, except very old ones that are technically limited so.

This book is one of Arcadia's Regional Titles. For the most part they are all excellent. I got the one on Queens county and found out that a streetcar line ran through mostly back yards from Flushing NY to Jamaica NY. That explains the wide street on 164th St, which would otherwise be a narrow Queens street. No other source published this type of information.

if you want a good primer, but not every nut and bolt in PE's history, this is agood place to start.

0 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars short on historical accuracy, December 13, 2007

By	B. Stenman - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I grew up in Pasadena and saw the trolly car tracks being torn out of the ground and the right of ways abandoned. With a little bit of investigation, pre-Internet, I easily learned of the company that was created and funded by Standard Oil, General Motors, and Firestone Tire, with the express purpose of buying up all the electric street car lines in the country and converting them to bus routes using fuel from Standard Oil and tires from Firestone to run the General Motors coaches. This conspiracy made it to the US Supreme Court but by then the damage was largely done.

Instead of environmentally benign electric street cars in major cities throughout the country we now have buses belching out diesel fumes and polluting the air we breathe and contributing to global warming. Even if cities wanted to restore electric street cars, such as are found in almost every city in first world countries other than the United States, the cost to purchase the right of way makes this prohibitively expensive.

This is the sort of whitewash of history that helps explain the profound ignorance of so many "educated" people in this country. I am surprised and dismayed that the book was written by someone who professes to be a historian.