Chris takes us on a ride through the history of the historic red cars. Chris is joined by Clifford Prather a Pacific Electric Railway Expert. #HuntingtonBeach #HiddenHuntingtonBeach #OneHB #SurfCity3
Loved this presentation on the Pacific Electric Railway, and thanks Clifford Prather, too! Sometimes I wished I could travel back in time to experience the LA streetcars and much much more. So much has been lost to time.
the smaller rails @ the beach were more than likely used for portable oil derricks, to drill & maintain the oil wells as needed, thums offshore oil islands uses that same concept ,on rails
Sweet one ! It would be great to reestablish the Pacific Railroad along the cost from San Diego to North West Eurika .. Full circle and bring back the past just make it better the track is already in place 100 years under ownership. Henry Edward Huntington was a smart and brilliant man and cared about Humanity ! We can also add a bike path next to it .. just in case we feel like biking from San Diego to the Red Woods 😀👍With love and respect Neda:)
Henry E. Huntington cared about money. He married his aunt which doubled his fortune, his transit system was used to transport people to house lot sites he was trying to sell, and sold electricity and water. He broke, sometimes violently any strike his workers started. All you really need to know about him is he plastered his name all over S California-HB, Huntington Harbor, Hotel Huntington, Huntington drive, Huntington Hospita;, etc.
I used to live in Bellflower on foster road directly across the street from Carpenter grade school. Foster road was the city limit border. I was in Bellflower and the school was in Downey.
A few years ago I asked for and received documentation from the City that the bridge over Ellis Avenue was accepted from the contractor in November 1980. So by that point it would have only carried freight trains of the Southern Pacific. Old topographic maps show spur tracks into the water treatment plant and a plastics manufacturer located just south of Main Street. The overpass wasn't used much, if at all. The actual interchange between SP and PE was at the station of La Bolsa, located just north of Main Street. Interesting video.
The rail down on the beach is most likely a leftover from the oil derricks that could traverse back and forth over each particular well cellar, similar to a system that existed down in Long Beach close to Ocean and the 710 freeway. .
Wow. I grew up in Westminster/Huntington Beach(near Beach City Dodge and Westmont, behind where Target is now) and never knew about this. Apparently shut down right before I moved there from LA. I did know about the LA trolleys, because the tracks were still in the roads, and we'd see them when we went to LA. I did know that Huntington was a train magnate, but never knew the history behind it.
I remember putting my finger on the side of the rail when Pacific Electric freight was switching on Lake ave. Also, many do not know, but there is a water tower in Sunset Beach which is now a home. PCH had to curve to avoid it.
The Southern California Railway Museum (formerly known as the Orange Empire Railway Museum) in Perris has an original red car on display. It was manufactured in 1913. There are also two original Disneyland ticket booths.
Excellent video. Incidentally, you may be interested to know that the inside designs of the PE cars along with even the horn sound was duplicated in the old single deck steel red carriages on the Sydney NSW Australia trains, which were used until the mid-1990's.
They were found guilty by a federal court of conspiracy. They were fined around $1000 or some insulting amount for dismantling an entire countries light rail services. No one who can think clearly would choose diesel busses or bumper to bumper traffic over a rail service.
National City Lines purchased almost the entire nation's urban rail companies right after WW II. Whomever the president was of the trolley system, in each city that National Transit Lines purchased, was presented with a GMC truck and bus franchise. When NTL and later the first Metropolitan Transit Authority, not the same MTA we have today, was finished dismantling the rail system and converting it to busses, that person received the franchise. The original MTA in LA county was replaced by the Southern California Rapid Transit District. Let's see, given a GMC franchise. No, I don't see any conspiracy. Uh huh.
There was, but the Red Car Trolley Line was shut down in 2015, after being brought back in 2003. There is now a Red Car "Trolley" which is a gas-powered trolley bus, which takes people around the same general area (especially during Fleet Week). They have/had plans to even make part of the Red Car right-of-way into a Public Park in early 2022. Sad.
The NCL Scandal from GN did actually happen! This is NOT comspiracy theory! Watch the video 'Taken For A Ride that came out about 25 years ago. It covers basically LA, Philadelphia, San Francisco and the Nay Area in general. Ed Quinby was also a real person. I just saw this video on YT as the VHS copy that I had became lost, but it still is on YT here. I wasn't aware that the PER went into Long Beach Proper, I had thought that it terminated to your neighbour to the north Lon Brach. Well Henry Hungtingon who founded PER would of course have influenced the red cars in this place (after all it was renamed Hungtington Beach since Pacific Beach). Are their currently (2022) any restoration organisations there for things related to PER? Good work despite having to disagree partly on Prather's assertion that NCL being fiction and some conspiracy theory. That's not right. NCL involved some 80 other major cities as well (belive it or not) Manila in the Philipines! And... maybe in Canada as well.
PE was closing down lines well before the 1950's because they were not profitable. People started moving to cars because they allowed you to go to your destination where ever it would be. You didn't have to travel to a station, wait for a train, take the train to another station that was miles away from your destination. With a car you just drove from your home straight to any place you wanted to go. Fact is PE died because there were better ways to get where you wanted to go. And the same can be said today. Todays mass transit system is non profitable just like the PE, it depends completely on tax payers and not riders to keep it operating. Take away the tax payer subsidy and the whole system crashes and goes bankrupt. Just like the PE
