Postcard view of the Elevated Terminal at 6th and Main Streets
Pacific Electric's Watts Local Line and Los Angeles to San Pedro via Dominguez Line
Postcard view of the Elevated Terminal at 6th and Main Streets
Passenger trains on the Long Beach and San Pedro lines departed from the elevated steel structure at the rear of the Main Street station. After 1950, the Watts local line also used this elevated terminal.
The following shot, taken in 1941, looks north towards the elevated structure. This shows the 7th Street Surface Yard below the elevated structure. Seventh Street is behind the back of the photographer. This yard was used to store trains when out of service and was also used to load mail on special mail cars operated by Pacific Electric. The Union Labor Temple is the building with the ornate cornice just visible at the right. This building at 6th and Wall was the original headquarters of the AFL unions in Los Angeles. The Labor Temple was an important site of forums, debates and political activity in Los Angeles before World War 1. In that era the local AFL labor council worked with the Socialist Party to run candidates for city office. The labor council also published its own weekly newspaper, The Citizen, at the Labor Temple.
The following image, taken in 1955, shows the entire length of the elevated structure. The street at left is 6th Street. The Pacific Electric purchased a right of way behind the buildings on the south side of 6th Street all the way to Central Avenue. This was part of a plan to eventually extend the elevated structure to Olympic and Hooper, to avoid all running in downtown streets. That elevated extension was never built. The large parking lot at the left is on the site where the Union Labor Temple formerly stood.
Trains ran down a ramp at 3.89% grade to street level at San Pedro Street, near 6th Street. Most of the ramp was on a wood trestle structure. The intersection of 6th and San Pedro Streets was dominated by the El Rey Hotel (shown in the photo below). The El Rey Hotel billed itself in the '30s/40s as L.A.'s "finest moderate priced" hotel. Today the El Rey Hotel is the home of the Weingart Center — a nationally-recognized social service center for the homeless and a center for research into poverty and homelessness. This area on the east side of downtown L.A. — the "Skid Row" area — now has the largest concentration of social service-dependent people in the U.S.
The following photo shows a package freight motor running on San Pedro St. with the track onto the elevated structure curving off to the left.
Author's collection. Photographer unknown.
The line ran in street trackage in San Pedro St. from just south of 6th St. to Olympic Blvd., and in Olympic Blvd. to Hooper Ave. The street trackage was about one mile in length. The area traversed was light industrial, mainly produce and garment firms. In the following photo a San Pedro-bound train traverses Olympic Boulevard.
At Olympic & Hooper the line entered a private right of way paralleling Long Beach Ave. At that point the yard leads from 8th Street freight yard joined. According to P. Allen Copeland, this point was called "Oscar's Junction" by PE crews (after PE president Oscar Smith). In the following photo (from "Pacific Electric in color volume 1") the tracks curving to the right are the yard leads to 8th Street freight yard.
8th Street yard served the main L.A. wholesale produce market and the Pacific Electric freight station. These facilities are shown in the following aerial photo from the 1930s. The three large parallel structures are the Union Terminal warehouses. The right-most warehouse in the row of Union Terminal warehouses was the main warehouse for the Broadway department store chain until 1952.
The wholesale produce terminal is the rectangular series of 3-story buildings above the Union Terminal warehouses. The gas holding tank (no longer existing) of the former Loew Gas Works is top right. The street running diagonally on the left of the photo is 8th Street.
The photo below shows the former Broadway department store warehouse as it looks in
recent years (at 7th and Alameda Streets).
Just south of the Oscar's Junction there is a three-track yard on the west side of the main line and this yard is lined with metal sheds. The following photo shows one of these sheds as it looks today (currently occupied by a watermelon wholesaler). The vacant land in the foreground is the former PE mainline right of way.
San Pedro and Long Beach passenger trains used the center "express" tracks of a four-track mainline as far as Watts — 7.45 miles from 6th & Main Sts. station. The outer tracks were used by Watts local trains and freight trains. The following photo shows an outbound Long Beach express approaching 14th Street, just south of "Oscar's Junction."
Photographer: Ira Swett
The area along this stretch of the PE mainline was mostly industrial but there are a few houses (as in the following photo), typically dating from the turn of the century, squeezed in among the factories and warehouses. As of the 1960 census, 46% of the households in this area did not own cars.
The four-track line did not have automatic block signals but did have the signals of three interlockings. The signals governing these interlockings were originally semaphore signals but these were replaced with searchlight-type signals in the late '40s/early '50s. Usually low-level dwarf signals were used.
The first interlocking was encountered at Amoco Junction (near 24th St.), where the Santa Monica freight line crossed and the yard leads from Butte St. yard entered from the east. The Amoco tower was located above the tracks on a steel signal bridge-style structure (see photo below). The Amoco interlocking was the last location for type B semaphore signals on the line, which were not replaced til 1954. The semaphore signals were mounted on four-track-wide signal bridges.
Photo: Donald Duke
I took this photo of Amoco Tower in the early '60s after abandonment of rail
passenger operations. The L.A. city hall is visible in the center of the photo.
Butte St. yard was the main carload interchange point on the PE Southern District, connecting at its eastern end with the SP-UP Joint Line, which ran on the east bank of the Los Angeles River. The east end of Butte St. yard was at Santa Fe Ave., about two blocks west of Redondo Junction Tower. The 20 classification tracks in Butte St. yard had a capacity of only about 17 40-foot cars each. Two switching crews were always on duty at Butte St., one at the west end and one at the east end. When yard tracks became full, yard crews would pull the track and move the cars to Graham Ave. yard in Watts. The following photo shows Butte Street yard from the south end circa 1950. The Southern Pacific is at the right.
I snapped the following photo in Butte St. yard in the early '60s. The trolley car body here is the corpse of a former 500-class wooden interurban. It was used as a locker room for crews. The lone palm tree was visible in numerous photos of Butte St. yard from the '50s.
Butte Street Yard was later named "J Yard". Below is a more recent photo, looking east.
From Washington Ave. to Slauson Ave. the 4-track mainline was in the median of Long Beach Ave. At Slauson Ave. the line crossed the Santa Fe harbor line and the Whittier-Fullerton line diverged to the east. The second interlocking tower governed this junction at Slauson Ave. The four-track mainline was plagued with a number of grade crossings of arterial streets, with only wig-wags to warn motorists. As of the 1950s the speed limit through all crossings between Amoco Junction and Watts was 25 MPH. (In the late '50s crossing gates were installed at Florence Avenue — the only crossing gates on the PE mainline north of Dominguez.)
South of Slauson Ave. the line enters the community of Florence — mostly Craftsman-style bungalows lining the tracks. At Gage Ave. a track diverges to the west serving the Wingfoot Industrial District, named for the Goodyear Tire Co. logo. The largest plant in the tract was the Goodyear tire factory. The last steam loco in use on the Pacific Electric was used to switch the Wingfoot tract in 1953. In the next photo we see an outbound Long Beach train running through the grade crossing at Florence Avenue.
The only highway grade separation on the line is encountered at Firestone Blvd. (photo below), which also marks the north end of Graham Ave. freight yard.
Photo: Ken Harrison
Graham Ave. yard, in Watts, held the overflow from Butte St. yard and had the main Pacific Fruit Express (PFE) icing deck on the PE Southern District. The icing deck had a capacity of 23 cars and was located on stub-end tracks. The icing deck was used to load refrigerator cars with ice. The narrow Watts passenger station was just north of 103rd Street. This passenger station is shown as it looked in the 1920s below.
In the next shot, a 3-car rush hour train on the Watts local line is moving up to load passengers at the Watts station.
South of 103rd Street was a maze of slip switches and diverging tracks of a three-way junction. Watts included a passenger station, separate freight station, brick substation, interlocking tower, and four-track carhouse. Lines diverged here to Bellflower-Santa Ana and El Segundo-Torrance.
Photographer: Ira Swett
The line was double-track south of Watts, and was governed by automatic block signals. From the city limits of Los Angeles at Imperial Hwy. to the south city limits of Compton at Greenleaf Dr., the line paralleled Willowbrook Ave. A station agency for Compton was located at Compton Blvd. South of Greenleaf Dr. the line entered open countryside.
Another interlocking tower was encountered at Dominguez Junction where the San Pedro line diverged from the Long Beach line. The line diverges to parallel Alameda St. and the Southern Pacific San Pedro branch. At Carson St. the largest yard on the line is encountered -- Dolores Yard. This yard had been built in 1943, during the war boom, but faded in importance after the war. However, it became important once again after the PE-SP merger in 1965 and is a very busy marshalling yard on today's Union Pacific. The following photo (by Donald Duke) shows a southbound freight on the San Pedro line near Dolores.
Watson station was located at Sepulveda Blvd., which was also the site of the huge Richfield Oil (now ARCO) refinery. A 10-car PFE icing dock was built at Watson in 1943, supplementing the main icing deck at Graham Ave. yard. The Watson icing deck was used mainly for icing banana trains moving up from the harbor. (The Watson station building was recently demolished to make way for the Alameda Corridor project -- a grade-separated rapid transit line for containers.)
I took this photo of Watson station in the early '90s.
After crossing the Santa Fe harbor branch again at South Watson, the line veers slightly southwest as it runs through Wilmington. At Pacific Coast Highway Thenard Yard is encountered. This was the main PE marshalling point for freight in the harbor area. Thenard yard was located at the point where the Long Beach freight branch joined the San Pedro line. Until 1949 a separate rail passenger line was operated over this branch from downtown Long Beach to San Pedro.
During the '30s/'40s/'50s PE was the largest rail carrier for Los Angeles/Long Beach harbors, carrying 35% of total rail traffic. Although the Harbor Belt Line arrangement had roughly equalized traffic to Los Angeles harbor, the Harbor Belt Line deal did not apply to Long Beach harbor, where PE/SP had a virtual monopoly. The Harbor Belt Line arrangement pooled all the trackage of the four railroads, and the city of L.A., south of Anaheim St. Each of the railroads provided crews and engines to participate in the switching work and received a share of the traffic. PE crews picked up interchange from HBL at Pier A Yard and moved the cars to Thenard yard. In the following photo (by Donald Duke) an outbound passenger car passes East Wilmington Junction, where the Long Beach freight line joins the San Pedro main.
At Anaheim St., the city-owned track in McFarland Ave. diverged. This track was used by Catalina boat trains and shared with Santa Fe. The track ran in the street through oil fields to the Santa Catalina Steamship Terminal and the Harbor Belt Line Pier A Yard.
The Wilmington station was located at Avalon Blvd. At B Street, the line veers southward, paralleling Neptune Ave. and passing along the west edge of the Harbor Belt Line Pier A yard. A banana terminal was located along the line in this area.
Photographer unknown (ERHA Archives)
South of Pier A Place the line becomes single track and enters the Southern Pacific bascule bridge over the mouth of the West Ship Turning Basin. After crossing the bridge and its approaches, the line becomes double track again in San Pedro. During the late '40s/early '50s, there was an average of 70 openings a day of the bascule bridge. This was the cause of many delays to passenger trains.
The PE tried to get the authorities to allow the bridge to be kept in the down position during rush hours, but failed. The shipping interests, on the other hand, had been campaigning for removal of the bridge since the late '30s as an impediment to ship traffic. They were eventually successful and the bridge was officially put out of use as of 1955 and removed in 1957.
There is a certain popular mythology about the bascule bridge. You will hear people say that it was taken out of service due to being damaged by an errant ship. That is not the explanation. In fact the bridge was damaged by ships ramming it on various occasions during its life. A damaged bridge can be repaired. In reality it was a political decision of the relevant authorities that forced its removal.
After the bridge was removed, PE San Pedro commuter trains, and Harbor Belt Line freight trains, had to use PE's more roundabout, curvy line into San Pedro around the edge of the West Basin. This line diverged from the San Pedro line at B St. and ran for a mile in street trackage in B. St. before encountering the private right of way at Wilmington & San Pedro Rd. (The Harbor Belt Line eventually relocated much of this line, straightening out many of the curves and moving the line off of B St. onto a private right of way along the south side of B Street.)
The PE line in San Pedro paralleled the SP-owned track, which was used by the Harbor Belt Line. At First St. there was a sizeable PE mechanical department yard which was used for car storage and maintenance. The PE passenger station in San Pedro was located at 6th Street and Harbor Boulevard (originally Front Street). The area around the PE station was a racially mixed neighborhood (about 40% black and Latino) — unusual for L.A. in the '50s — with a majority of the households not owning cars. The following postcard looks north on Beacon Street at 6th Street, one block from the PE station. This old commercial center of San Pedro was the area around this intersection.
The following postcard shows the same intersection, looking west on 6th Street circa 1920. The building with the clock tower was the Bank of San Pedro. The clock tower was ordered removed by city authorities after the 1933 earthquake. Ornate cornices on buildings in this area were ordered removed also. A second streetcar track was added in 1923-24 so that streetcars did not have to run on the "wrong" side of the street.
The photo below shows Sixth Street in the late 1920s. The tracks in the street were used by local PE streetcar lines serving San Pedro. These streetcar lines were abandoned by 1938 -- a casualty of the depression and the competing bus lines of the San Pedro Transportation Co.
The following photo looks east on 6th Street at Pacific Avenue. The track to the right was the Pacific Avenue streetcar line to Point Fermin. This photo was taken in 1934, the last year of the Pacific Avenue streetcar line.
Much of area around 6th and Beacon Streets, including the buildings across from the PE station site, were demolished in an urban renewal project, beginning in August 1971. The tall brick building in the photo below (the San Pedro Municipal Building) is virtually the only structure in this photo that still exists.
The next photo looks at the San Pedro Municipal Building from the opposite direction.
I took this photo on a recent visit to San Pedro.
The following postcard looks in the same direction in the '30s. The domed building at right, built in 1906, was the San Pedro city hall at one time, and later a library. It was demolished circa 1966.
The Railway Preservation Resources website has photos of the Pacific Electric San Pedro station and nearby car storage areas.