1028 on New Year’s Day
Ralph Cantos Collection
Pacific Electric cars, lead by no. 1028, sit staged at Third Street on January 2, 1949.
Ralph Cantos Collection
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This is quite a sight! I wish I were around to see these Big Red Cars lined up at Third Street on January 2, 1949.
A good shot by the photographer. The photo is a little out of focus, but its still a good shot.
The VISUAL is indeed stunning. Especially the lack of New Year’s Day auto traffic. Now consider the AUDIO: Three car trains with their air compressors intermittently starting and stopping, the dinging and motor noise from the arm-changing ACME traffic signals on the four corners, the occasional four-bell “call for signals” from a conductor, the car top gongs ringing as the train sets release their brakes, take a point and then do a running brake check, before winding up the controller and setting the traction motors humming in tune to the ringing of the gears on the wheelsets punctuated by the screech of flanges straining to not climb the outside rail on a curve. All of it reverberating off the hard surfaces of the street, sidewalk and adjacent buildings. A symphony played long ago that will never be heard again. And all in the absence of automobile noise! Sic Transit Gloria Mundi!
After reading your comment, I really wished I was at Third Street on January 2, 1949 more than ever before.
That beautiful symphony will never be played again. Life just isn’t fair. Sigh. 🙁
There’s a Star Trek episode with a machine called an “Atavachron”. This apparatus opens a time portal, and the keeper inserts a shiny disc (and this was before CDs were invented) that directs the subject to his or her desired place and time. I have often thought that such a machine would find a ready market among railfans wanting to go back to the days when steam locomotives and wooden interurbans were part of everyday life.
“All Our Yesterdays,” the final episode to be played by NBC during the original run! Mr. Atos! Mariette Hartley! (Yes, I’m a fan…) – great call, Bob! – ed.
To hear that beautiful symphony again, I would prefer the “Guardian of Forever” a doorway to any time and place in the Star Trek episode “The City on the Edge of Forever”.
Another great option for time travel to the past would be “The Time Machine” (1960). I’ve always loved that time machine actor Rod Taylor’s character H. George Wells used to travel forward in time to meet Weena (Yvette Mimieux). But, of course, I’d use it to travel back to January 2, 1949 to heard that symphony Ceasar J. Milch described so eloquently.