TIMEPOINTS
VOL 2 NO 04 April 1951
THE
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA TRACTION REVIEW
FEATURE
ARTICLE .............By Malcolm D. Isely
HUMAN DRAWBACKS
TO THE LARGE STREETCAR
(SC-ERA
President Isely, an LATL motorman until recently, continues his series on the future
possibilities of the electric railway in America, earlier articles of which
appeared in the September, November, and February TIMEPOINTS - Ed.)
The advantages of a big
transit vehicle could be many. With
automatic turnstile conductors the problem of expensive labor versus low fares
would be pushed into the background.
Reserve capacity could also be kept in each car. Every day there are sudden changes in
riding, which are apparently based on nothing more predictable than human
caprice. They may be general throughout
the property, or quite local in nature.
Other public utilities, faced with a similar problem, maintain standby
facilities--only transit loads to estimated capacity and hopes for the best. Needles to say its customers are often
disappointed.
The drawbacks of a large car
exist mainly in the minds of transit managements and equipment manufactures
that apparently view the problem from the very narrowest outlook of the
investor. Admittedly the investor has
not much leeway of capital today, but he still takes quite a shellacking for
that very reason. A little additional
risk capital in transit could cause a major and we believe profitable
revolution. The poor, tired old
worrywart investor, trying to keep his present holdings without any further
investment, is likely to say, “My father stood on a streetcar, my grandfather
stood on a streetcar, and that’s good enough for me.” Only it isn’t. He drives
to work in his own car. His hopeless
outlook, though stymies progress.
Suppose that a new MU unit
for one-man operation, as large as two PCC cars, were to be operated on a
typical property. The scheduling
department would start figuring how the car could be made to do the work of two
PCCs. The traffic department would
begin to hail the car as a cure-all for over-crowding, which it would not be
after the schedule department got through.
The safety department would hamstring it with a set of rules designed to
relieve the safety department of all responsibility in event of an
accident. The operating department
would let it tie up traffic because it would not fit existing zones. The union would demand an extra man on it,
and the local auto club would damn it because it was not an automotive vehicle.
The car’s sponsors should
adopt a positive “this-will-work” attitude.
The union should be consulted and sold on the very real advantages of
such a car to platform men. The city
fathers should be told in advance: “Here is one solution to the traffic
problem. We need longer loading zones,
like they have in Hollywood, to made it work.”
The car should be well publicized to the general public. The auto club should be made to understand
that the car could attract dumb drivers off the streets, leaving them freer for
club members’ cars. All departments should
understand the possibilities and limitations of the car and these departments
should understand top-management’s determination to produce with it a greatly
improved ride, as well as to reduce costs.
Above all, top management
should have just that determination.
The operation of one car for the purpose of shaking down mechanical bugs
might be necessary but one car couldn’t prove much about itself from an
economic or service viewpoint. A whole
line should be equipped and, if the one line were chosen to pay the deficit on
the rest of the system (as Woodward is doing in Detroit-Ed.) It might do just
that, but the service (on the remaining lines) would still be poor while the
union would still be anarchistic and desperate, short-sighted management would gain
nothing of permanent importance for the investors.
Unless everyone shares the
benefits those who are left out will fight for their share, and when people are
as close to and dependent upon each other as they are in big city transit, they
cannot fight without hurting their own interests. Management, with the new car, adequate capitalization, and an
unexpected show of public spirit, might reverse what, for want of a better
name, we call the “rat-race trend” in public transit.
(M.D. Isley’s series will continue
in the June TIMEPOINTS, with an article on “The light-Weight Streetcar.” For a criticism of his February article on
“One Way to Save Platform Labor,” see Letters to the Editor section.
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FEATURE
ARTICLE (2) .........................By Andrew M. Payne
PLEASE PARDON
MY AIR!
(SC-ERA
member Payne is motorman on the Los Angeles Transit Lines, and has been
persuaded to recount his impressions and experiences while on the job, thus
giving TIMEPOINTS a more human quality than has hitherto been possible-Ed.)
Those of you who have often
had the desire to be, but never actually have been an electric railway
motorman, you no doubt wonder if such a job is a good deal of fun, or is it,
after a fashion, just another form of work, or just what is it really like?
Actually, I believe it is a
little of both, but not necessarily in the sense that one might understand from
being merely a passenger upon any of many electric railways, because operating
an electric car you do not always observe things in the same light that you
would when just going along for the ride.
Naturally one cannot spend all his time gazing at the scenery and expect
to operate an electric car, nor on the other hand it is the same thing day
after day, day in, day out, as it is in many other types of work. Something usually happens to break the
monotony, and that is the main reason why many of us are motormen. Operating over the few remaining
narrow-gauge car line of the LATL, especially the 5 line and more specifically
the owls of that line, as I have been doing the past few years, one is apt to
run across some amusing experiences.
One such incident occurred
while I was taking a vacation from my usual run, the 5 owl, and was giving one
of the 7 owls a try. Upon arriving at
Manchester and Broadway in the wee hours of one cold winter morning, my
attention was diverted toward the rear of the car by the dull thud of one
somewhat inebriated individual falling out of one of the seat. “Hey, where the hell we at?” blurted the
rudely awakened sleeper. Right off the
bat, one of the passengers yelled back, “Salt Lake City.” To which came the reply, “Well, geeze, lemme
off, I wanted off back in L.A.” I don’t
believe I have ever disposed of a drunk with as little effort since.
Of course not everyone that
rides the owls is intoxicated, contrary to the opinions of some individuals I
know.
I have one certain night in
mind, when I caught my leader on the 5 line on his last trip. I saw his car sitting at Avenue 28 and
Idell, just outside Division 5, and after pulling up behind him, went to see
what was going on. It seems that at 7th
and Broadway a woman who was waiting for her change sneezed and dropped her
partial front plate into the farebox! The
operator was really in a dither at what to do at first. When he reached First Street, he called he
dispatcher on the company phone and explained the details of the incident. The dispatcher (never having heard of anyone
dropping their false teeth into the fare-box before) wanted to know what the
operator had been drinking. After
convincing the D.S. that he needed a fare-box change, the operator went on his
way. Of course this caused much amusement among the passengers, but the poor
woman was wondering how she was going to get her teeth back. When the mechanic with the new fare-box met
the operator outside Division 3, he was accompanied by a couple of special
agents who wanted to smell the operator’s breath! After viewing the evidence, they looked at each other, scratched
their heads, and were gone. Being
around Yule time, the passengers just couldn’t resist, and broke out in song
with “All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth.”
In those good old days on
the 5 line, before one-man operation and the over-dose of traffic lights that
now exists, I used to get quite a variety of equipment to operate, the best of
which was and in my mind always will be 950 (ex-funeral car used on SC-ERA’s
July 16, 1950, excursion-Ed.). With
this car it was next to impossible to run late. The 600s were good, but not quite as good as the 950. Although I used to run 950 almost regularly,
I still spent a good deal of my time running the 1100s, most of which were
lemons as far as riding qualities go. I
don’t believe I ever had more fuses blow on me that I did with this type of
equipment. One night when all the
streetlights were out on Broadway the ribbon fuse let go on the 1165 just as I
was nearing Ninth Street. It blew with
such a wallop and flash that all of Broadway was deserted for several minutes
afterward.
Yes, to those who are not
too well acquainted with the habits and inner secrets of electricity and
electric railroads, there seems to be no end of puzzlement and surprise. Take
for instance that most mysterious of all devices, the electric track
switch. Many is the time during a rain
storm that an unsuspecting pedestrian decides to step over an electric
switchpoint just as the trolley of the oncoming electric car is entering the
switch pan. Then he wonders how he got
the shower bath.
For if anything ever “breaks
the monotony” of streetcar-ing, it is the rain. This was especially true when the 300s were running. It was enough grief to run these “twin-engine
jobs” in dry weather, but when the rains came, the fun came also. Pulling in and out on the old “B” line “over
the back way” consisted of running from Brooklyn and Evergreen via Evergreen,
Fourth, and Euclid to the crossover at Whittier and Euclid, and then into Seventh
and Central car house over the “R” line. Pulling in over this route, we had a
stiff upgrade curve at Fourth and Euclid where there also was a boulevard
stop. One rainy night when pulling in I
made the mistake of making the stop at this point and succeeded in getting
started just well enough to get stuck in the curve where the wheels spun around
and around. I was able to back the car
out and down the hill, dumping sand, which soon washed away. Three more tries, no luck; every time I
tried to get a run up the hill, the wheels just ground and spun away. Finally I backed off and dumped several
large piles of sand by hand on both rails, backed away, got a good running
start, and around the curve we went.
But if you think that’s all that can happen when you’re working with
streetcars, then “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
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CLUBNEWS
SC-ERA
NOW ONE YEAR OLD; DIVISION GROWS
ERA’s first and only
Division west of St. Lewis officially came into being on March 28, 1950; the
Executive Board of the national organization approved one week after its
charter. One year later, membership and
TIMEPOINTS circulation are at an all time high (TIMEPOINTS reaches 47 addresses
every month now).
TIMEPOINTS itself expanded
from a bi-monthly two-page sheet, as it was in January 1950, to be a monthly
magazine now often six pages in length.
Exchange agreements exist with the Western Railroader, The Bay Area
Electric Railroad Review, The Circuit Breaker, and the Headway Recorder.
SC-ERA is every more
actively fulfilling its intended role as the only all-electric railfan
organization in Southern California, run with democratic autonomy yet
affiliated with the oldest and most active nation-wide all-electric railfan
group, the Electric Railroaders’ Assn.
PE
FANTRIP DATE CHANGED TO MAY 13
SC-ERA’s forthcoming
excursion to Newport Beach, Whittier, and Yorba Linda has been postponed one
week from May 6 to May 13, 1951. The
change was made in response to a conflict with an overnight steam trip out of San
Francisco the weekend of the 6th.
This will be the last
interurban train ever to click off those miles along the shining Pacific shore
to Newport. No one should miss this
opportunity to ride what was one of PE’s very best passenger lines, along with
a trip through the long freight-only orange-grove districts of upper Orange
County, on what will also be the last train to Yorba Linda. (Both it and Newport are going diesel later
this year.) PE’s Southern district will never be the same again after trolley
wire has vanished from Newport.
The trip will be an all-day
affair, and will feature 5050-class equipment, never before used on an
excursion.
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OUT
OF THE PAST
Rail
Routes of Yesteryear-10
Huntington
Beach - La Bolsa Line
Pacific Electric once
operated passenger service on a 2.66-mile route from Huntington Beach, on the
Newport Line, north to La Bolsa, primarily to serve workers at the Holly Sugar
Plant.
The January 1916 Official
Guide lists 5 round trips per day on this branch, from 6.40am to
7.00pm. By January 1918 the spread had
changed from 6.40am to 5.33pm. After
1920 the line was no longer listed in the Guide, although it continued to
operate.
Car 228 was used on the run
in 1927, a Railroad Commission report on PE reveals. At that time cars left Huntington Beach at 6.40 and 7.40am, at
3.15pm, and 4.40pm. Returning from La
Bolsa, they left at 7.10 and 8.10am., and at 3.35 and 5.10pm.
On October 30, 1928, PE
received permission to abandon all passenger service on that line, and as PE
was generally prompt in such matters, it is almost certain that the last car
ran during November of 1928.
The line is still on the PE
route map, in diesel-operation now connected with former SP trackage from
Stanton to Wiebling, which PE acquired after the last war. The diesel freight route to Newport may run
via Stanton and La Bolsa to Huntington Beach, thence to Newport, rather than
via Seal Beach as at present.
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LOCAL
TRANSIT NEWS
PE 1100 CLASS RETIRED; LATL BUS CHANGE
Monday, March 19, saw the
5050-class take over the Glendora run from the 1100-class, cars of which are
now stored at West Hollywood. Rush-hour
running time is a few minutes longer now, but Sunday schedules were unaltered.
March 11th LATL lines 4, 49,
and 90 were combined as outlined last month
PE
ADDS LINE NUMBERS TO ITS TIME TABLES
“You can catch a 32 car anywhere on Hollywood
Blvd.!” “The 2 line runs out to
Pasadena!” These phrases are now
legitimate, for official route numbers (long in existence in company records)
now are being added to public timetables of the Pacific Electric. By April 3, the following numbers had also
appeared: 58, LA-Whittier-Santa Ana; 86, Riverside-Van Nuys; 52, Temple City; 70,
Pasadena Oak Knoll; 63, LA-Riverside & San Bernardino; 79 Garfield Ave.;
82, Wilshire Blvd.: 77, Hollywood-University; 76, Beverly-Sunset; 75, Venice
Beverly Hills loop; 4, LA-Glendora; 67 LA-Sierra Madre; 55,
LA-Newport Beach; 81, Ventura Blvd.; 85, Birmingham Hospital.
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EASTERNTRANSITNEWS
The
East Through Western Eyes-10: A PHILADELPHIA STORY
(One
of a series of reports by the Editor on his impressions of Eastern electric
railways while exiled from Southern California-Ed.)
The weekend of March
10-11-12 saw your editor journey southwest from New Haven to Philadelphia to be
the guest of TIMEPOINTS subscriber Bob Abrams and ride PTC on an NRHS fantrip.
There are many different
ways of reaching Philadelphia from here, including the most obvious one of
traveling by through train over the Hell Gate Bridge, into and out of Pen
Station in New York and onward to the City of Brotherly Love without once
leaving one’s seat. However, such
practices are very dull, and instead, I arose at 3.30am Saturday morning,
walked down to the Railroad Station, took a train (which was a half hour late)
to Grand Central, took the shuttle to Times Square (this 2,100 foot line is now
recommended for replacement by a continuously moving conveyor belt!), an IRT
local to 50th Street, where I arrived at the Greyhound Terminal shortly after
7am. The 7.30 blue-pooch for Bethlehem
Pa., arrived at the latter point about 10.45, exactly on time. The bus depot is at a terminal where a grand
union on the Lehigh Valley Transit still exists intact, but most of the curves
are seldom used. I walked south over a
bridge that had been abandoned to streetcars only the November before, and found
myself at the end of the suburbanish South Side line running between Bethlehem
and Allentown, really just a streetcar line with a good stretch of right-of-way
in its middle.
Before proceeding, I’d
better generalize that the LVT is the most backward transit operator for a
population district of its size that exists in America. It has just lurched on year after year, its
cars getting shabbier and older and weaker all the time, and its track
deteriorating far beyond PE. Bob Abrams
told me that LVT bought the ex-C&LE lightweights with the sole intention of
using them as a stopgap for a few years before buses moved in. The war lengthened their reign, but the
famous “Galloping Goose” Liberty Bell Limited will be gone within the next few
months, replaced largely by city-type Macks! Right now the only decent equipment, rail or bus, on LVT, are
about 25 post-war Macks (like the LATL 5000s); the rest of the bus fleet is
decrepit and falling-apart 25-passenger-or-so prewar Macks. The best streetcars are Master-Units, but
very poorly maintained and only on one line.
Two older types of streetcars are used on the conglomeration of rambling
rail lines that still spread outward from Allentown and Bethlehem. On tripper service to Cooperstown on the
Liberty Bell Line from Allentown some ghastly, almost unpainted 400s are
used. And needless to say, the
ex-C&LE 1000s are but a shadow of their former selves: windows shattered
but un-replaced, paint peeling, schedules slowed (although a few beautiful
bursts of speed remind one longingly of the dim past), entire appearance
dingy. Once the LVT was an attractive
way to get from Philadelphia to Allentown; now all the riding is local, from
town to town, with through passengers seeking some other more inviting mode of
transportation.
And what a contrast to step
aboard a P&W bullet-car at Norristown for the final journey into a busy,
crowded electric terminal at 69th Street, Philadelphia! Returning Monday morning, I rode a P&W
“Express” that ran the 14 miles of the route in 16 minutes with two scheduled
stops along the way.
I had never ridden PST
before, so I made a round trip on the West Chester line, a real
side-of-the-road interurban except that quasi-PCC’s are used, with a truck that
gives them a 1000% better riding quality than Pittsburgh’s 1700s. It is an uphill-down-dale line, following
the twists of the highway. The motormen
make no secret of running fast: they go full speed down hill, until they are at
least 60mph, then race up the other side passing all the cars on the highway,
and repeat the process a dozen times.
It is single track with meets, which are not perfect but largely
good. They have a very fine one-man,
two-man arrangement: a second man rides the cars in both directions from the
outskirts of West Chester to the end of the line in the heart of the business
district (there is a pay-enter, pay-leave system), collecting all the fares
outbound and inbound and leaving the motorman free during this heavy loading
stretch, but allowing the economies of the one-man operation the rest of the
way into Philadelphia. The Media line
regretfully had to be omitted from the agenda this trip due to lack of time.
The next day I enjoyed a PTC fantrip covering a large part of the
streetcar system in Philadelphia, sponsored by the NRHS. In tone it was very different from Western
excursions, in that the men were much more “normal,” less excited, older, more
“respectable.” The picture stops were
not frantic scramblings.
Most Philadelphia railfans
themselves will admit that most of the PTC streetcar lines and equipment types
tend to be monotonous (“all the streets and cars just look alike”). Exception to this on the excursion was the
remnant of Line 37 private right-of-way.
This line is also unusual in that it is the only streetcar line in
operation to be submerged under tidal waters for a portion of each day. Since a flood in November, the line has
operated only at low tide, with a bus on the outer end at high tide. In planning the fantrip, the NRHS consulted
a tide-table. The water of course tends
to weaken the rail, and it is very rough.
The line will be cut back in the near future. But not even PE’s Newport Beach Line can claim to be as intimate
with water as this!
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LETTERS
TO THE EDITOR
DISPATCHES
FROM TIMEPOINTS READERS
.... I was interested in Bob
Abrams’ comment on the Los Angeles Transit Lines in your February
TIMEPOINTS. While the old Los Angeles
Railway was not on the modern side, I don’t see how anyone can describe it as
being run down. As far as track and
equipment, the old LARy could not be beat.
With the possible exception of San Diego, I consider the LARy track the
best in the West. The cars, of course,
were on the antique side, but were always well maintained and brightly
painted. Even before it sold out to
National City Lines, the Los Angeles Railway had obtained some PCC cars and was
ordering more. All the NCL did was to
scrap some very good track. For my own
part, I can never see why anybody would stop the “D” and “A” lines, but that
was what the NCL did. Chief trouble
with the Los Angeles Railway was its too early standardization of equipment;
while good from the maintenance standpoint, it did definitely date its cars and
made the system obsolete in the eyes of those from other sections of the
country. In my own opinion the biggest
mistake that the LARy made was to build the Type H cars (and cars of this
general design), but I suppose that the 3'6" gauge was against the general
adoption of a low floor car at the time.
This is more or less borne out by the fact that both Denver and Portland
(Oregon) kept to big wheels... The LARy 2501 should have set the new
standard. It was not until 1930 that
the motor companies seem to have developed a satisfactory low-floor motor
suitable for double-truck narrow-gauge streetcars and the Portland Traction
Company was the only one to made extensive use of it.
M.D. Isely’s “One Sure Way
to Save Platform Labor” is not up to the high standards he set in his two
earlier articles. It shows that he has
not had too much experience with coin-operated machines. In some cities turnstiles have been used on
streetcars such as Rochester, Dayton, New York and Syracuse, to permit rear
loading of one-man cars. I have ridden
St. Louis PCCs upon which there were coin-operated turnstiles. However, I think that Mr. Isely has too much
confidence in the intelligence of the public.
The best way to ease the operator’s load is to simplify the fare
structure system... I feel that Mr.
Isley has placed too much emphasis on “labor turnover” and I am sure he will
find that it is a problem not exclusively confined to the transit
industry... Generally speaking, the
labor turnover in the transit industry is far less than in others as well as
being one of its own lesser problems. I
do agree that in many cases there is too much work for one man on a car and
that a two-man crew is justified on many city runs for part of the distance at
least. (Sour grapes from San
Francisco?-Ed.) Had the old Market
Street Railway Company followed its original idea of running two-man cars on
Third, Fillmore, and Market (not Mission? -Ed.) with one-man cars on all other
streets, San Francisco would still be a major street railway center.
Berkley, Calif. ---ADDISON H. LAFLIN