Alan Weeks’ Pacific Electric Railway Northern & Southern District, 1950s
By Alan Weeks
This is a mixed batch from the North, Downtown and the Southern Districts.
For years the Watts Local and Sierra Vista Local ran as one thru line from Sierra Vista to Watts. It did not go into the Main Street Elevated Station but ran instead on Main Street. On September 30, 1951 the complete North District passenger lines were substituted with bus lines. But before the Watts-Sierra Vista Line was broken in two lines when the track age on Main Street was abandoned. They then ran as two lines into the Main st. Station. The Watts line was abandoned in 1959 or so.
FOUR TRACKS
Northern District Four Tracks main Line branched off of the San Bernardino Line at Valley Junction about a mile North at Indian Village it turned into Four Tracks that went all the way to El Molino in San Marino. The Pasadena Oak Knoll Line branched off at the end of the Four Tracks.
Southern District 4 tracks started at 9th St. and Long Beach Blvd. Then they ran all the way South to Watts Junction.
NOTE:
# 325 The building the right side of the Street was the Main office of the Pacific Electric Railway / Southern Pacific Railroad. You can see where the tracks used to run through the building and out to the Elevated Station and connect with San Pedro Street. The Dispatchers had their Office on the East side of the building overlooking the elevated deck and could see all the trains coming and going.
# 342 This bit of trackage was left over from from the abandoned Alhambra-Temple City Line (abandoned in 1941 months before World War II.) It only ran a couple of miles east from the Sierra Vista Station. There was also an interchange track which connected to the Southern Pacific Railway El Paso Line.
Working on these pictures I took for the first time since I took them it really made The Pacific Electric Railway come back to life. The whole system came back into my memory. I don’t think we appreciated this wonderful system until we lost it.
Alan Weeks Photos and Collection
Leave a Comment
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Nice gallery capturing some interesting corners on the route.