The Pacific Electric Railway (reporting mark PE), also known as the Red Car system, was a mass transit system in Southern California using streetcars, light rail, and buses. The largest electric railway in the world at its greatest extent, around 1925, the system interconnected cities in Los Angeles County and Orange County, as well as in San Bernardino County and Riverside County.
The service was organized around two nexuses located in the city centers of Los Angeles and San Bernardino, which were each connected in 1914 by the 1200-volt San Bernardino Line.
The system shared some dual gauge track with the 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) narrow gauge Los Angeles Railway, "Yellow Car" or "LARy" system. These were on Main Street in downtown Los Angeles (directly in front of the busy 6th and Main terminal), on 4th Street and along Hawthorne Boulevard south of downtown LA toward the cities of Hawthorne, Gardena, and Torrance.
Read more about Pacific Electric Railway: Districts, Heritage and Popular Culture, Routes and Facilities
Famous quotes containing the words pacific, electric and/or railway:
“We, the lineal representatives of the successful enactors of one scene of slaughter after another, must, whatever more pacific virtues we may also possess, still carry about with us, ready at any moment to burst into flame, the smoldering and sinister traits of character by means of which they lived through so many massacres, harming others, but themselves unharmed.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“Suddenly I’m not half the girl
I used to be.
There’s a shadow hanging over me . . .
From me to you out of my electric devil....”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. Pancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand—my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm’s length.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)