1243 to Los Angeles in Claremont
Jack Finn Collection
Pacific Electric interurban no. 1243 with a full passenger load rolls past the Claremont station on the Eastern Division.
Modified based on comment
Jack Finn Collection
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Is it possible that the wonderful looking building in the background is the Redlands Depot? – Steve Crise
Claremont Depot. Car 1243 has the wings painted on the sides but not on the ends, so this must be a postwar fantrip on trackage that had been freight-only since 1941.
The depot used to have a sign reading “Claremont/Home of Pomona College”. It lasted into the 1960’s, probably disappearing when the line was rerouted to get the tracks off First St. In later years, what was then the SP was tied into the Santa Fe east of downtown, and where once there had been an interlocking tower near Cambridge Ave. the line now had a switch onto ATSF. By this time, Santa Fe passenger service had declined to the point where there was little likelihood of conflict with the once a day SP Rialto Hauler. The area in the foreground is now parking for Metrolink, which runs more trains through here every weekday than PE ever did. Pomona College is special to me, because my younger daughter is an alumna of Pomona, which is regularly one of the top-rated colleges in its class. One year it was the only institution in the top ten that didn’t have snow in the winter.
Correction on my comments on car 1243. This car never had the “butterfly” wings on the ends, but the cars that did kept them until the end. Car 1243 spent most of its life as a trailer, not being motorized until 1946.
Bob,
Is there a chance you could have Claremont and Corona confused? The SP used several miles of the ATSF to get to customers at the end of the line in Corona, and was able to remove a lot of track in the middle of Magnolia Ave.
As a Trainmaster on the SP, I rode the Freedom Train to and from the LA County Fairgrounds in 1976, and took two rail defect detector cars from Basset to Bench on the former San Bernardino line in early 1977, which was probably the last thru movement of any kind. Freight service East of Orange Avenue Junction, Vita Pakt orange juice, and the propane plant at San Dimas was handled out of Baldwin Park, then later from City of Industry. Service to Snake River Lumber Co. just South of the ATSF on the East side of Euclid Ave. in Ontario, and points East was handled by a crew out of West Colton which came up the Palmdale Cutoff to Bench.
Movements were made under Register Authority from both ends, which can only be used on dead end branches, so Train Order Authority was required for movement within an unused two mile section inbetween.
A switch never ocurred at Claremont until Metrolink took over and abandoned the PE between Claremont and Rialto. The one customer remaining on the Eastern portion of the line is Orange County Lumber, who was paid to move from the end of the SP’s Los Alamitos branch after a derailment so the SP could abandon it instead of replacing 4 miles of rotten ties. Now the UP has to provide one day a week service to Rialto.
I remember hearing about the Corona job and how in its later years, they would get on the Santa Fe 3rd District at May, and run as fast as their SW-8 (or similar) switcher could run to get to Riverside and back on PE/SP rails so they wouldn’t be slowing up Santa Fe traffic.
Regarding the PE/SP branch down Euclid Ave in Upland (the last remnant of the line that stared out with a mule-powered car). I was part of the Orange Empire volunteer salvage crew that removed this spur and took the pieces to the Museum in 1976-77.
Regarding Claremont: It sounds like trains could go from Bassett to Bench, with the Santa Fe closing the gap between Berkeley St. and the depot site but in normal operations, they never would.
And if all goes well, sometime in the next 6 years or so, this location will have a double track electric railway when the Gold Line Foothill Extension Phase 2B comes to Claremont.
Bob Davis: The sign reading, “Claremont” (top line) “Home of Pomona College” (bottom line) would be in that photo but is covered by the palm tree and also partially out of frame to the right. This building was intentionally demolished overnight, in 1968, by the Southern Pacific before those who would want to save it had a chance to do so. This was about ten years before the rerouting of this line over to the Santa Fe, as you mentioned, which had nothing to do with the destruction of the depot.
George Todd: Bob Davis is correct in his account of the line change. With little traffic on this SP branch, the City of Claremont wanted to eliminate this track through the 1st Street median. An arrangement was made between the City, SP, and Santa Fe to cut the SP (formerly PE) line over to the Santa Fe line South of it, just East of the location in the photo. At the other end, just West of the former crossing of these two lines at the West end of the City, the Santa Fe installed a switch back out again to the SP line, which at that point, was on the South side of the Santa Fe. All SP railroad traffic then took the Santa Fe tracks to pass through Claremont and the PE/SP tracks through town were removed. The crossover track installed at the East end of town (just beyond the photo location) still remains within the weeds as of this writing (2022), disconnected at each end; the NE end having no track anymore due to the removal of the rest of the PE/SP track later on, and the SW end stopping some distance from where it connected with the remaining former Santa Fe line which is now used by Metrolink.
Thanks for commenting, Mark, welcome! – Jim Bunte
Hi Jim, Just now saw your message -two years later! You’re welcome, and thank you.