Los Angeles Union Station (aka: “The Last Great American Railway Station”) will be celebrating its 75th Anniversary on Saturday May 3. The grand opening included a parade of trains took place on Alameda Street at the front of the station. The event was well documented in still photos but until recently, it appeared that no movie film of the film was in existence. It turns out that legendary Disney animator and model train enthusiast Ward Kimball shot a silent home movie that day. The film is now available through the efforts of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and Metro Transportation Library and Archive. Click here for a link to see it
You can see a snippet of Ward Kimball’s model railroading and railfan afficianado legacy in the recent movie “Saving Mr. Banks”, where the first meeting between Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) and the Mary Poppins author shows the real Disney astride one of his live steam engines in a photo on the office wall.
Cedarwoodron
Ward Kimball and Walt Disney both had backyard layouts.
What a amazing time capsule, probably the first and last occasion a AC5 cab forward displaying train 99 in the number boards operated on the Pacific Electric, that odd looking SP shop switcher featured towards the end survives in the custody of Travel Town and is scheduled to be restored to operating condition, today, this parade would be impossible to replicate as those PE rails are long gone along with railway guns, cab forwards the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe.
Dave
I don’t know about the PE rails and ties that ran down Alameda but I do know that a lot of the track became part of the roadbed for current streets in L.A. When I first moved to Southern California in the early 1980s, you could drive down Hollywood Boulevard and feel the uneveness in the pavement due to the ties that were underneath the pavement. I’m too young to ever have seen a Cab Forward run but I hope that someday Union Pacific shows a little love towards the remaining one that resides at the California Railroad Museum and gets it back in working order. I would pay good money to see that going over Donner Summit. If they can justify bringing a Big Boy back to working order, they can certainly find good reason to bring the Cab Forward out of mothballs.
At least I had the pleasure of riding behind Santa Fe and Southern Pacific F7s when I was a kid living in Northern California and my parents took me for a trip south to go to Disneyland in the early 1960s.
Those rails on Alameda Street were intact until quite recently, although they had been out of service for many years, in their heyday they served a vast urban switching district and performed an interchange function at Union Station among ther SP and the PE’s Northern District and were quite often used for civic events, such as public display of the Daylight and the first Alco PA set aquired by the Santa Fe which occured on Exposition Blvd which was accessed by the Alameda Street trackage.
Dave
Dave
I’ve seen those shots and it never dawned on me until now that the PE tracks were used to stage those events. I know it might be difficult for those among us who think of L.A. as a very car-centric region that bristles at the thought of public transportation and rail travel. Up until about 70 years ago, Southern California had an extensive network of commuter railroad track and services. Airline travel, Kar Kulture, along with oil and automotive companies convinced the folks in charge that Angelenos wanted private cars and the tracks were paved over. Ironically, the resurgence in commuter rail over the past couple of decades uses some of the right of ways that flourished with trolly traffic in the first half of the 20th Century.
Perhaps PE would have carried on if they had been permitted to discontinue passenger operations and restructure themself as a independent dieselized regional freight feeder as they attempted to do, only to be denied this last reprive by the PUC, ICC and parent SP.
Dave
I was always under the impression that the tracks in Alameda Street were SP rather than PE. They were the access to SP’s Central Station before LAUPT was built.
In certain places, you’ll see potholes in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard, look in and you’ll see the tops of rails. You can still see this today, particularly at Hollywood and Gower, though I’m sure the rail-potholes have been filled in by now.
Just a couple months ago, 7th Street near the Mac Arthur Park area was being re-paved; when they scraped off the old asphalt, guess what, the old LARy tracks were perfectly visible.
This is correct; there were, however, PE freight tracks that served Union Station, on the south end of the station (where the Metropolitan Water District building is today…the main tracks were on Aliso Street, which is now the 101 Freeway) and there was also an LARy loop off of Macy Street (now Cesar E. Chavez Ave).
Union Pacific doesn’t own the cab-forward in the California State Railroad Museum, and never did, so it is unlikely they would take much interest in restoring it. Besides, it would take away the most dramatic exhibit in one of the country’s greatest railroad museums, and require significant disruption of the museum, as it was never intended to leave the building. UP is nice enough to bring their restored steamers to Sacramento every couple of years to sit outside the Museum with a few pieces of the collection.
Now, the AT&SF 4-8-4 and 2-10-4 that CSRM has sitting out on their tourist line south of Old Sacramento, on the other hand…if BNSF can be convinced to chip in some money to get one or both of those rolling, now that would be something! Not quite as iconic as the Cab-Forwards, but the “Texas” types were among the largest non-articulated locomotives ever built.
A cab forward and a giant rail gun! Anyone know if that rail gun is still around?
I agree on the Santa Fe locos down the river from Old Town. BNSF would make some folks happy if they made a move to get those restored. As far as the Cab Foward goes, never say never. Look at the Big Boy that rolled out of the L.A. Basin for the first time in over 50 years last Monday. The Cab Forward is heritage.
Never saw or heard of a 4-2-4 before. Interesting.
Thanks for sharing,
Richard