Love watching these old videos on Pacific Electric. I use ride on the red street cars with my Grandma all over Los Angeles. I was 6 years old when the Pacific Electric shopped running. Great memories, thanks for sharing.
For what I saw yes I still say its time to bring back the red cars ilk Ralph stores send is we forgot to go places and go home what a sade suchuation we have in trying to put it back old store if thay wear in good shape today less smoge and no parking lots on fwys what a shame and j have road them in Long Beach Calif back in the 50s
Love this video it brings back memories. Up the age of 6 my Grandma and I would ride the red car all over Los Angeles. (Just spend time together ) It was a sad day the red car shopped runing.
This is fantastic, I rode Bellflower and Long Beach to L.A. Lived in Bellflower, never saw the Newport line in operation. Thank you. I never saw nor rode any of the 1100 nor 1200 class cars. The man using the phone was David Gelespie( not sure of spelling) who was a member of OERM, and long time PE conductor.
This is a superb video. Thanks for uploading this vintage movie. One really gets a feel for the atmosphere of that time and PE operations. These days, however, I suspect that insurance companies would $#!+ a wild monkey about some of the railfan behavior.
What a delight the Pacific Electric Red Car must've been in its day especially for the communities it served. They looked beautiful and seemed fast and efficient. I wish they could recreate a Red Car line here in NYC. Probably somewhere in Nassau or Suffolk county where they have enough land to build a small town around it and build a spur to West Hempstead at least if not all the way out to Jamaica. Or maybe even the North Shore.
I wasn't born in that era but boy looking at this incredible amazing footage please bring back the pacific electric and the hell with metro and their crappie bus service i know they own and have trains but we need more and even more rail service . this is why i had to force myself to buy a car we have the most unreliable public transportation system to me in the world . Metro all they do is buy buses that breakdown .
It’s sad that passenger streetcar lines never made any money only at a deficit. Although electric freight lines did make money. It was only a matter of time these lines were abandoned or dismantled. Because the popularity of purchasing an automobile and necessity to expand the Highway system. Gone also is freight trains in western Urban Los Angeles and the businesses who used them.
Judging from the cars I would say more late 1940s than 50s . Very interesting to watch thanks . 100 years ago these electric lines spanned over 1000 miles and had 1600 trains a day .
"Taken For A Ride", is a documentary that depicts how big oil intentionally destroyed Pacific Electric because they didn't promote gasoline and the auto industry. At the time, L.A. county had the best public transportation system in the world but people were denied it over corporate profits.
At least some of this film (if not all) is 16mm well exposed with excellent color from Gorden Zechoric. Does anyone here know where the original film is so it can be properly scanned?
I have a question that I hope somebody can answer for me at about the nine minute 15 second mark the Pacific electric freight with two electric locomotives on it are they MUed or is there a second engineer I am from Southern California but this is long before I was ever born fascinating footage thank you for sharing
My memory is hazy, but I believe the boxcabs could be MUed up to two units. The PE had a somewhat motley batch of equipment of different classes, and much (but not all) of it could be connected in pairs or sometimes larger groups of the same class. Note this was all built well before the standard EMD MU cable we know today was invented, so all of the various MU capabilities were pretty much proprietary to each unit class.
PE 1200"s could hit 70mph, blimps ?50, PCC cars could hit 45-its all academic because of the street running, and crowded track conditions. The Long Beach line I believe averaged 20 mph.
These films are from Gorden Zahorich stay in Los Angeles in 1949 and 1950. They were all filmed in 16mm and the original film quality is excellent. I have no idea where the original film is or even a good scan is now.
@@interurbans My family has 16mm, 8 mm, Super 8 home movies in beautiful Kodachrome color that go back to 1949. And yes, Kodachrome when stored well looks absolutely gorgeous when projected with a nice sharp image. Which is not the case here because these are terrible transfers, and obviously quite old ones. The filmmaker has achieved some really great stuff here and it's a shame that the footage can't be located and rescanned in reasonable HD quality. 2K and 4K is overkill for this type of film for a ordinary transfer, unless one was going to incorporate it into a modern movie for theatrical release.
