Long Beach

I was born too late for the Pacific Electric. As a kid, I do remember seeing the abandoned tracks on Long Beach Blvd. (formerly American Avenue). My parents and grandparents would tell me stories of the "Big Red Cars." I pictured them, huge and impervious, gliding through traffic. The rails seemed like remnants of a vanished age of giants.

My mother's family came to Long Beach in the 1930s. My grandfather worked worked in the oil fields at Signal Hill. During the war my grandmother worked on A-26 attack bombers at Douglas Aircraft. Their neighborhood bar was Joe Jost's. Until I was five we lived in the nearby suburb of Lakewood, from where my father would commute to his ships at the Long Beach navy base.






Long Beach was where my concept of the city was born. My grandmother would take me downtown on a Long Beach Public Transportation bus (a successor to the local Pacific Electric service). The tall buildings, crowds, buses, street names, The Pike and the abandoned tracks tracks were imprinted on my imagination.



Pacific Electric "Hollywood Cars" stacked for scrap on Terminal Island, near Long Beach. I have been told that as a very young child I was taken to see them (or the former Los Angeles Railway streetcars stacked in the same way, that were there as late as 1966) but I have no memory of doing so.


Browsing on ebay a couple months ago, I came across an unnamed brass interurban model. It looked to be a Pacific Electric #1200 class "Long Beach" car, that was imported by Suydam. Without much of a description, perhaps it could be picked up cheap.

But if so, what then? That was a dilemma. The bounds of my collection were an outgrowth of a planned traction layout based on Portland. As time passed, I realized the layout was unlikely, but the resulting collection was of Oregon prototypes, or models that could be converted. The Pacific Electric was outside those boundaries, or would reset them. Where would it lead? More Pacific Electric? The Sacramento Northern? All west coast prototypes? Any Suydam import?

It was a slippery slope.




click on images to expand


I counted the windows, checked and rechecked my copy of the Brown Book of Brass Locomotives, 3rd Edition and old Suydam catalogs. It was indeed a Pacific Electric #1200, specific to the class ordered for the Long Beach line in 1921. The possibility of a bargain and my life long fascination with the Pacific Electric were just about enough for me to opt in. The prototype's close association with Long Beach provided me the tipping point.

I calculated a bid low enough to justify any of my concerns over frivolity. Then I adjusted upward, to merely a good deal. Finally, I added what I considered insurance to avoid heartbreak. By then it was not such a good bargain, but I placed the bid and hoped for the best.

The auction closed five dollars below what I was willing to pay. I had won and lost at the same time.





Suydam imported 1,100 model #1222 cars built by Tsubomi Model Company in 1961, 1964 and 1967 with a final batch by the Orion Model Company in 1973, and 365 trailers, or "sleds" (model #1222T). There are no obvious markings on my car to indicate its year of release.





When it comes time for paint, I am leaning toward the later color scheme applied to the "Long Beach" #1200 class, just before World War 2, with its Southern Pacific Daylight influenced trim, that was worn up to their retirement in 1951.




I am still not sure of the car's implications on the scope of my collection, although a #1200 "Portland" class car that came to the Pacific Electric after the shut down of Southern Pacific's Oregon electrification is starting to seem essential...






A September 1968 advertisement in Model Railroader for Ray's hobby shop, where as a small child I would stand fascinated, staring at the layout in the front window, watching model cab-forwards pull long strings of orange refrigerator cars through a mountain landscape.




A Long Beach Press Telegram advertisement, featuring the author of this piece.

Oregon Electric #107

My first Suydam car was initially a disappointment. The model was a match for the Oregon Electric's 62 foot coaches, the longest cars on the company's roster. I purchased it on ebay. It arrived, complete with the classic yellow box with red ends, tarnished but in good condition. After years of coveting, I finally owned a Suydam.

The glow of ownership soon dimmed. While researching the car's history I came across an unpleasant truth; the Oregon Electric never owned powered 62 foot coaches, only trailers. Poles were not an option. My car's prototype could not operate by itself. It never lead a train through downtown Portland, or across the Willamette Valley to Eugene. It was, quite literally, an also ran.



Oregon Electric 62 foot coach #107 at Forest Grove Oregon. (click on images to expand)


Still, it was irresistibly brass, with a heft impossible to plastic. Even unpainted and tarnished it was a showpiece. Perhaps a second coach, one with poles, could be purchased to make a two car train, I thought. In the mean time I sent the car to Mitch Holland in Southern California, the dean of west coast traction model painting, to be finished for the Oregon Electric Railway.

In the weeks that followed, my continued research revealed to me the history of the Oregon Electric's longest cars and of their representative models.





In 1907, the Washington, Baltimore and Annapolis Railroad purchased nineteen 62 foot coaches from the Niles Car Manufacturing Company. Long and fast, they were the ultimate expression of what Niles advertised as "Electric Pullmans". Changes at the WB&A's terminal forced the railroad to return the order to the factory. Nine cars found homes elsewhere, while four others, according to William D. Middleton in Traction Classic's Volume One, were converted by Niles to trailers and sold to the Oregon Electric.

The history of the models has parallels to their prototypes. The Suydam catalogue, circa 1956-57 introduced models #1907 (powered) and #1907T (trailer) of 62 foot long coaches for $29.95 and $22.50 respectively. Niles Company advertisements touting the "Electric Pullmans" featuring the Washington, Baltimore and Annapolis cars were used as illustrations.




By the release of the 1959 catalogue, Suydam was importing a line of Oregon Electric cars. Eight powered or trailer cars were offered along with the previously released #1907 and #1907T models (although only the later was actually appropriate for the Oregon Electric).




When my car returned from Mitch Holland in gorgeous dark green with gold lettering, any disappointment I once had vanished. It might not have been my first choice as a stand-alone model, but as part of a collection it was a good starting point, one that under other circumstances I might have finished with.

As for the Oregon Electric's former Washington, Baltimore and Annapolis coaches, none appear among the ten or so cars existent today. More research is needed to tell the story of their final disposition.