The Echo Park Avenue Line was a
Pacific Electric
The Pacific Electric Railway Company, nicknamed the Red Cars, was a privately owned Public transport, mass transit system in Southern California consisting of electrically powered streetcars, interurban cars, and buses and was the largest electr ...
streetcar
A tram (also known as a streetcar or trolley in Canada and the United States) is an urban rail transit in which vehicles, whether individual railcars or multiple-unit trains, run on tramway tracks on urban public streets; some include s ...
line in
Los Angeles
Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...
. The railway traveled from 11th and Hill Streets in downtown Los Angeles along the
Hollywood Line to Sunset Boulevard where it turned right and proceeded north along Echo Park Avenue to terminate at Cerro Gordo Street in the
Echo Park
Echo Park is a neighborhood in the east-Central Los Angeles, central region of Los Angeles, California. Located to the northwest of Downtown Los Angeles, Downtown, it is bordered by Silver Lake, Los Angeles, Silver Lake to the west and Chinato ...
neighborhood.
History
The route was opened as a
horsecar
A horsecar, horse-drawn tram, horse-drawn streetcar (U.S.), or horse-drawn railway (historical), is a tram or streetcar pulled by a horse.
Summary
The horse-drawn tram (horsecar) was an early form of public transport, public rail transport, ...
line in 1889 under the
Elysian Park Street Railway Company.
Pacific Electric designated the service with the number 32.
At the time of the Great Merger of 1911, the line operated only as a shuttle on Echo Park Avenue between Sunset and Cerrito Gordo.
Early the following year, the cars were continuing downtown to be through-routed with the
Venice Boulevard Line. The inbound terminus was truncated to 9th and Hill in 1916.
Between July and September 1926, the terminal was extended to 11th and Hill. Power issues in 1924 forced the route to again operate as a shuttle service on Echo Park between July and November. Through-routing to Venice continued starting in 1932 and persisted until 1950. Evening and Sunday service was converted to bus operations starting in 1939, but was reestablished in 1942 as a wartime measure.
Service was reduced to a single franchise car on October 1, 1950, with full abandonment following on December 28.
[ ]
See also
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Streetcars in Los Angeles
Streetcars in Los Angeles over history have included horse-drawn streetcars and cable cars, and later extensive electric streetcar networks of the Los Angeles Railway and Pacific Electric Railway and their predecessors. Also included are modern lig ...
*
Streetcar suburb
A streetcar suburb is a residential community whose growth and development was strongly shaped by the use of streetcar lines as a primary means of transportation. Such suburbs developed in the United States in the years before the automobile, when ...
*
List of California railroads
The following railroads operate in the U.S. state of California.
__TOC__
Common freight carriers
Freight carrier information is current .
Other
* Mare Island Rail Service (MIRS) at Mare Island
* Oakland Global Rail Enterprise (OGRE) at th ...
*
History of rail transportation in California
The establishment of America's transcontinental rail lines securely linked California to the rest of the country, and the far-reaching transportation systems that grew out of them during the century that followed contributed to the state's so ...
References
Bibliography
*
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External links
Electric Railway Historical Association of Southern California
History of Los Angeles
Light rail in California
Pacific Electric routes
Railway lines closed in 1950
Closed railway lines in the United States
Railway lines opened in 1889
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