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The original Pacific Electric Red Car Lines ran from Down Town LA out Garvey ave then turned northward in Baldwin Park as it continued east into West Covina, then into San Dimas, Lavern, Montclair then into Upland using the tracks that ran just above 10th street....A subroute turned south along the then dirt road of Euclid, south into Ontario, with stops at Chaffey College and ending at the UP tracks below Holt.

The Line in Upland continued till it got to around the San Bernardino and Grove area....It split one line going south along grove all the way to 7th street.....The main line moved into Cucamonga and crossed Foothill using the Pacific Electric Subway Bridge....It moved in a north east direction along the base of Red Hill and Behind the Sycamore Inn....It then crossed Vineyard which at that time was a one lane water way on the old Cucamonga Creek Byway....The line made its way into old Alta Loma on Amethyst, with a small depot there....The line then moved east along the future route of Baseline, then crossed Haven and ran parallel with Baseline....One line turned south and then parallel Foothill so it could get into the Wineries...This was a freight line shared with the red cars....It then crossed Foothill right before Milliken....If you drive out Foothill today, the only trace of the old line is a jog in the roadway to the south just before the Lights at Milliken, and then the tracks that come north from the Burlington Northern Santa Fe into the modern day factories and numerous companies along Arrow and down towards 8th.....That jog is a result of the angle that the tracks made across Foothill....And It has never been fixed....You must also remember that there were no flashing lights or crossing gates any where along any of the Pacific Electric Lines....Every thing just moved at much slower pace back then....The Tracks to the North ran along Baseline then went east, crossed Foothill at Lime and down thru Fontana.

From Fontana it move south to Mission and east along the 2 lane Van Buran thru the Churchill agricultural areas then out to March Air Base....One line went to the east and ended at the main gates....The other line went south along old highway 395....In another story i wrote about my grandfather, who with one leg help build all of the stations and fruit storage buildings along the tracks....Many of them still stand today....Then the line turned east again at Perris towards San Jacinto and then south once more ending up in Hemet where it was turned around by the riders themselves as they pushed the car around.

There were other short lines that extended off in different directions....One into Yucaipa, one into Highland and the other down south into old Temecula, or where old town Temecula now stands.....Back In Riverside at the Santa Fe Station the line headed south back along the future roadway of the 91 freeway down thru Corona and stopped at what is now known as the 71 freeway....It never went thru the Santa Ana Canyon as many think....The line coming up from Santa Ana curved north back to downtown LA....A short line went up to about where the 91 and Imperial meet....Travel through the Canyon was done by Pacific Electric Bus or car and even Wagons.

The History of the Orange Empire and the Pacific Electric.

The original Pacific Electric traces it's history back to 1895, when the region's first interurban line opened, connecting downtown Los Angeles to Pasadena.....Although the line was originally built for the Pasadena and Los Angeles Railway Company, the original builders couldn't raise enough cash to pay the bondholders, so the line was acquired by the investors.....The line was then purchased by Henry Huntington, the man who would build the Pacific Electric.....His company, the Pacific Electric Railway Company was incorporated on November 10, 1901.....The first new line built under the PE was the Long Beach line, which opened on July 4th, 1902.....Additional lines were built, most of which competed with the Southern Pacific for both passengers and freight.....During the next ten years, lines to Monrovia, Glendora, Sierra Madre, Newport Beach, San Pedro and Santa Ana opened for both passenger and freight service.....To fight back, the SP bought a substantial minority interest in the PE in 1903 by buying out several of Huntington's associates.

Huntington then founded the Los Angeles Inter-Urban Railway company to continue expanding his trolley network. Competition with the SP continued until SP reached an agreement with Huntington to buy him out....On September 1, 1911 as part of the "Great Merger", the new Pacific Electric was formed by the consolidation of the old PE with seven other local traction and interurban companies....Henry Huntington in turn gained exclusive control over the Los Angeles Railway Company, the local city streetcar system.

One of the first orders of business for the new PE was to unify their fleet color, painting over the yellow of the LARy cars acquired and the green of the Los Angeles Pacific to the standard PE red....New cars were purchased and existing cars renumbered into a unifying car numbering system....The PE was organized into districts, Northern, Eastern, Southern and Western.....The Northern and Eastern were soon combined into a single Northern District.

The Pacific Electric, the "World's Greatest Electric Railway System", hit its peak in the mid-twenties, operating over 1000 miles of track and 2700 trains daily.....It was during this time that PE opened a short subway in downtown Los Angeles to speed up service by reducing slow running in downtown traffic.....However, by the late 20's PE started using buses and the long and slow decline in rail service had begun.

The Great Depression of the 1930's caused ridership to drop precipitously which in turn caused the PE to lose even more money......Unable to purchase new trolleys, the PE began wide spread bus substitution in the late 30's closing it's first Los Angeles to Pasadena line in that time frame.....In addition, the famed Mt. Lowe line, the "Railway to the Clouds" closed after a fire destroyed the Alpine Tavern and a bad rainstorm seriously damaged the tracks.....An attempt to reduce rail traffic through the subway to rush hour service only resulted in complaints to the state's public utility commission.....In exchange for approval to abandon even more trolley service, the PE acquired 30 double ended multiple unit PCC cars for use on the subway lines.....However, bad track restricted the PE PCCs to primarily the Glendale-Burbank line.

The start of WWII saw rail traffic surge, on a system that was rapidly wearing out.....The United States Maritime Commission brought surplus cars down to Los Angeles from the Bay Area to use in Cal Ship service.....Traffic did not materialize to use all of the cars, so PE first leased then acquired the cars for use on primarily the Southern District.....Known as "Blimps" for their large size and carrying capacity, these cars would become synonymous with the PE in the twilight years.....These were the cars I traveled with my parents as we went to the La Brea Tar Pits and the LA Natural History Museum in 1959 and 1960 after parking in Downtown LA.
After the war, abandonment continued with all of the wooden cars gone by the end of the 40's.....Southern California began it's love affair with the auto, choking off many of the remaining PE routes, slowing the trains and making them less appealing to commuters......The Northern District ceased operations on September 30, 1951 after the PE was forced to abandon its Northern District lines near downtown LA for construction of a new freeway.....Unwilling to pay for the relocation of tracks, PE chose to substitute bus service for these lines.

In 1953, PE sold its passenger service to Metropolitan Coach Lines while retaining freight service, much of which was rapidly becoming dieselized.....The Metropolitan Coach Lines continued the policy of rail abandonment, closing the subway and the Western District in 1955.....Finally all that was left was four lines of the Southern District, soldiering on with the blimps and a few remaining Hollywood cars.

In 1958, MCL was taken over by the Metropolitan Transit Authority, and the rail abandonment continued.....Finally, on April 9th, 1961, the last of the Red Cars had made it's last trip on the Long Beach line, the same line the PE first built in 1902.

The Pacific Electric continued on as a dieselized freight carrier until it was quietly absorbed into it's parent, Southern Pacific in 1965.....These were the trains that went up and down Euclid ave when I was a kid....It was very interesting trying to cross the Double Wide Euclid with no traffic lights, nor any rail road warning lights on 10th, 9th, 8th streets....The only sound you heard was the constant ringing of the Engine Bells as it approached each intersection....Of course there were crossing gates at the Santa Fe mainline tracks, so everyone including the south or north bound Pacific Electric Freight trains would have to stop.

Twenty nine years later, on July 14, 1990, light rail returned to the Long Beach line with the opening of the Southern California Rapid Transit District Blue Line, running over much of the same right of way as the original Long Beach line.....The modern cars, originally painted in white with blue trim, carried a red stripe on the body to honor the Red Cars that had come before.....Electric traction also returned to portions of Hollywood Blvd., although now modern subway cars run under the street rather than on the surface as the predecessors once did.

Today, you can find many of the Red Cars, old Steam and Coal Fired Engines at the Orange Empire Railway Museum, located at 2201 S. "A" St., in Perris....Their phone numbers are (951) 657-2605 for info, and (951) 943-3020 for the office.....The URL for there online website is www.oerm.org

Gary Hall, the ghostpainter