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.
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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.
