Trolleyville Times

OTHER FEATURES

SAN PEDRO RED CAR LINE RETURNS

Thanks For Joining Us in the 21st Century

Darin Volpe - Incredibly enough, the year 2000 is a thing of the past, and we’re now officially into the 21st Century. This looks to be a very interesting time for us trolley fans. Cities throughout the country are pulling old trolley cars our of storage and restoring them so that they may once again populate the streets. And the public just can’t seem to get enough of them. Most significantly, as mentioned in the main article this month, is the building of two new Pacific Electric 500 Class streetcars for use on San Pedro’s returning Red Line. This further shows that classic trolleys are back like never before in a new century of boxy LRVs.

Thank you for making Trolleyville your stop on the World Wide Web for another year. With the advances in trolley modeling and the resurrection of trolleys in general, we look forward to being your tour guides for years to come.

New Cars Being Built for Waterfront Line

George Huckaby - Sunday, December 17th was a special monthly meeting of the Southern California Traction Club. After the normal business was conducted, the eight members piled into five vehicles and went to San Pedro and Wilmington to check on the progress of the construction of the San Pedro Red Car line and the cars that will be used for the line. First the group went to visit car #1058 which was being returned to the rails in a warehouse just off Pier A Street in the most southern tip of Wilmington. Car #1058 was "cobbled up" by Richard J. Fellows in his shops in nearby Terminal Island between 1960 and 1962. He purchased the body of car #963 from a water heater manufacturer in Compton, CA. One end had been burned beyond use and the other destroyed by a bulldozer. Richard modified the remains of the 963 to resemble one of the Pacific Electric 1001-1057 class of wood interurban coaches. About seven and one-half feet was added to the main carbody along with two rebuilt five-window ends. Then using two four-wheel bogies from military equipment; the car was converted to run on the street. It was to do this for the next thirty-five years for civic functions, parades and movies until Richard Fellows passed away in 1997. The car appeared in Who framed Roger Rabbit? among others. The first of the two trucks obtained from Japan was under one end of the car when we visited. The trucks are copies of a Baldwin truck very similar to those originally under Pacific Electric’s 1200 class when original delivered. The wheels have been replaced with American profile (AAR) wheels and the traction motors (one rebuilt GE 263A and three Toshiba Electric copies) have been thoroughly serviced and rebuilt. The truck is shown below along with one of the original two bogeys upon which the car ran for 35 years.

Shown left to right are the eight SCTC club members with the 1058; George Jones, Culver City; George Huckaby, West Los Angeles; Jan Podganski, Jr., Hawthorne; Akihisa Saitoh, Kyoto, Japan; Byron Brainard, Laguna, CA; Charles Hepperle, Claremont, CA; Bill Kift, Long Beach, and Dave Garcia, Covina, CA. Dave is also a major force in the maintenance department at the Orange Empire Railway Museum in Perris, CA. As such, he became the guru for prototype authenticity in the Southern California Traction Club. It is nice to know the prototype even in those circumstances when you can’t exactly replicate it.

The specifications for the electrical and the air-brake equipment of the 1058 were his responsibility. Dave specified completely off the shelf electrical equipment, all of it from mining locomotives. The air compressor shown on the left is a standard New York City subway car compressor. The air-brake equipment is entirely off-the-shelf and can be found all over the United States in commuter and rapid transit equipment. The entire design concept was to make these cars easy to maintain and to ensure high reliability while not sacrificing the look and feel of a 1911 Interurban car. Spares of critical components are being ordered along with the operational hardware. After looking at the methods used to convert the car to a rubber tired vehicle, it appears that Richard Fellows hoped that the car would eventually run on rails again.

The main attractions of the line will be two replicas of the Pacific Electric’s 500 class, which operated until the mid-1930s. These two cars are under construction in Seattle using both wood and steel construction. They will match the dimensions of the original 500 class except that certain allowances will have to be made for changes in the laws in the last 60 years. Similar cars at the Orange Empire Railway Museum were used to verify dimensions and details. An original set of drawings for the PERy 530 class was actually used for this project. The prime contractor for the two 500 class cars is Historical Railway Restoration (HRR) of Seattle, Washington, a firm owned by Tom Mendenhall. The actual building of the composite wood and steel bodies has been subcontracted to Pacifica Marine, another Seattle firm. Trucks for the car bodies have been obtained from Seashore Electric Railway and are Taylor type TR trucks from the old Boston Blue line cars. New wheels have been obtained from ORX (Pennsylvania). New gears from the Gear Works (Seattle) and the motor cases were repaired and machined by Machinists, Inc (Seattle). The traction motors were also completely re-wound by KJM Motor Services also in Seattle. Shown below are some photographs of the two 500 class cars, which will be numbered 500 and 501 as being constructed in November and December 2000. The first view shows the steel framework of car 501 with car 500 to the left in the background. The second shows car 510 with some of the wood being attached. The final photo is of a mock-up, which shows the Electric Lines #1, Red exterior.

The idea for this line has its roots in the desire to perform some urban renewal in San Pedro along with the promise of a local politician to bring the Red Cars back. The city had chartered the 1058 when it was on rubber tires and the idea gained momentum and the Waterfront Red Car Line was born. The Harbor Department, Port of Los Angeles, City of Los Angeles then took and ball and ran. Then entered Dave Garcia and John Smatlak of the Orange Empire Railway Museum and history began to be made. John Smatlak authored a historical study of the PERy 500 class, which formed a basis for the project. Trolleyville sources would not be surprised if some of the OERM Pacific Electric collection shows up on the line on special occasions in the future.

The second part of the trip involved the line itself. The line runs along the east side of Harbor Boulevard from a point just south of the Vincent Thomas Bridge to 22nd and Miner Streets. A car barn is planned for either 22nd and Miner adjacent to the substation and end of the line or just southeast of the intersection. See the map for location.

Overhead wire had been installed on approximately 25% of the line when we toured on December 17th. There are some views of the line and one of the stations. More on this line to come so stay tuned! This line is to run in 2001!