Vintage Los Angeles

When you get a chance, check out some great Vintage Los Angeles pictures posted by Ryan @ Ryan's Neat Stuff Blog. FANTASTIC !!!

Pea Soup Andersen's Restaurant - LA 1964

Great Airliners

National Airlines DC-8 at Miami International Airport
Florida, December 27, 1970.

Eastern Air Lines DC-8 at John F. Kennedy International
Airport - New York, May 28, 1972.

United Airlines Boeing 737 at Atlanta International
Airport - Georgia, August 11, 1976.

Republic Airlines Boeing 727 with original Hughes Air West
paint job at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport
Arizona, March 16, 1981.

USAir Boeing 727 at Los Angeles International Airport
California, February 19, 1988.

TWA Boeing 727 with St. Louis Rams paint scheme at
St. Louis International Airport - Missouri, October 1, 1996.

LINK: For more information on transportation visit George W. Hamlin on the Web.

Motel California

THE WESTERNER MOTEL - U.S. Highway 80 - 359 El Cajon Blvd. El Cajon, California - Nestled in the dry healthful climate of beautiful El Cajon Valley. Refrigerated Air Conditioning - Heated Swimming Pool - Carpeted - TV - Kitchens and Family units Available. Close to Restaurants and Shopping Centers. Credit Cards Accepted. HI 4-5946.

VIKING MOTEL - 1506 Mission Drive, Solvang, California - A charming, immaculately clean motel. All rooms at ground level around lawn and gardens. Individually controlled air conditioning and heating. TV. Phone (805) 688-4827.

NEEDLES TRAVEL LODGE - W. Hwy. Business 66, Needles, Cal. Telephone 714-326-3824 - Color TV - Air Conditioning - Room Phones - Heated Swimming Pool - Childrens Playground - Restaurant & Cocktail Lounge on Premises - 4 Blocks From Colorado River & Golf Course.

DESERT INN MOTEL - 1600 Harbor Blvd. Anaheim, California - Prospect 2-5050 - One of the newest and finest Motels in the area. Directly opposite Disneyland Main Entrance. Minutes to Knott's Berry Farm, beaches, sailing, fishing, Air Conditioned, free T.V., Phones. Family sized units available. Heated adult and kiddie Pool. Play area.

RIVERSIDE TRAVEL LODGE - 1911 University, Riverside, California - Phone: 686-0590 - Heated Pool - New TV's - Radio & Phone in Rooms - REDECORATED ! - Beauty Rest Beds - Kitchenettes, Air Conditioned.

Pacific Electric Railway

Electric trolleys first traveled in Los Angeles in 1887. The Pasadena and Pacific Railway was an 1895 merger between the Pasadena and Los Angeles Railway and the Los Angeles Pacific Railway. The Pasadena and Pacific boosted Southern California tourism by living up to its motto "from the mountains to the sea."

During this time, by consolidation of many smaller railroads, the Pacific Electric Railway was established by railroad and real estate tycoon Henry Huntington in 1901. Henry's uncle, Collis P. Huntington, was one of the founders of the Southern Pacific Railroad and had bequeathed Henry a huge fortune upon his death.

Only a few years after the company's formation, most of Pacific Electric stock was purchased by the Southern Pacific Railroad, which Henry Huntington had tried and failed to gain control of a decade earlier. In 1911, Southern Pacific bought out Huntington except for the LARy, the narrow gauge street car system known locally as Yellow Cars, and SP also purchased several other passenger railways that Huntington owned in the Los Angeles area, including the Pasadena and Pacific.

This resulted in what was called the "Great Merger" of 1911. At this time the Pacific Electric became the largest operator of interurban electric railway passenger service in the world with over 1,000 miles of track. The system ran to destinations all over Southern California, particularly to the south and east.

Major 1920s PE business was "taking the Red Car" for inland folks, such as in the Pasadena area, to the beaches at Santa Monica, Del Rey, Manhattan, Redondo, Hermosa Beach and Long Beach in Los Angeles County and to Newport Beach and Huntington Beach in Orange County.

On weekends, extra service beyond the normal schedules was provided, particularly in the late afternoon when everyone wanted to return at the same time. It was good times for residents of the region and good times for profits for the PE as this was the Roaring Twenties.

The Pacific Electric also ran frequent freight trains under electric power throughout its extensive service area (as far as 55 mile distant San Bernardino and 50 mile distant Redlands near Riverside), including operating electrically-powered Railway Post Office routes, one of the few U.S. interurbans to do so. This provided important revenue.

LINK: Much more at the Metro Library and Archive's on Flickr

Heartland Rails - USA

Kansas City Southern Railway - EMD FP9 - Elgin, Illinois, October 01, 2009 - Officials from KCS & CP tour the IC&E, seen here in Metra territory headed east at track speed. The VIP's will detrain at Bensenville and presumably take the Gulfstream home.

Iowa, Chicago & Eastern - EMD SD40-2 - Richwood, Wisconsin, October 07, 2009 - An ICE-powered train heads east nearing Watertown.

Amtrak - GE P42DC - Astico, Wisconsin, November 07, 2009 - The Empire Builder has 148 miles left in her trip cross country, running today right on time.

Canadian Pacific Railway - GE ES44AC - Maple Springs, Minnesota, October 11, 2009 - The 198 will run ahead of the steam special, making good time around the curves. It is the hottest train on this subdivision, and today's train is better than 7,000 ft. Of course, try convincing the fans waiting trackside on this day that SP 4449 wasn't the hottest train.

Southern Pacific Railroad - Steam 4-8-4 - CP River sub - Maple Springs, Minnesota, October 11, 2009 - Got glint?

LINK: To see more of Ray Peacock's great railroad photography, visit HearlandRails on the web.

And for those of you who have not seen Rays's other Heartland Rail posts, just click on the Heartland Rails link in the Viewliner Ltd. Index, located in the side bar.

1909 Cherry Mine Disaster

I recently received an email from Ray Peacock. Many of you know him from his website HeartlandRails.com and his contributions to this blog. Here is part of the email he sent me:

I went to our NRHS chapter meeting in Rockford, Illinois Saturday night, the presenter was from LaSalle IL by the name of Ray Tutaj Jr. He put on a 25 minute program about the Cherry IL mine disaster, which happened in November 1909 and killed 259 coal miners in North Central, Illinois.

There was a mine at Cherry that pulled coal out and Milwaukee Road tapped it for coal reserves for their system, using the Janesville, Wisconsin gateway. Ray Tutaj Jr. spent 10 years researching this and put together an entire HO layout of the Cherry Mine, featured on display in Cherry IL. Library.

*********************

The Cherry Mine had been opened in 1905 by the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railroad to supply coal for their trains. The miners included a large number of immigrants, heavily Italian, many of whom could not speak English. Boys as young as 11 years old also worked the mine.

On Saturday, November 13, 1909, like most days, nearly 500 men and boys, and three dozen mules, were working in the mine. Unlike most days, an electrical outage earlier that week had forced the workers to light kerosene lanterns and torches, some portable, some set into the mine walls.

Shortly after noon, a coal car filled with hay for the mules caught fire from one of the wall lanterns. Initially unnoticed and, by some accounts, ignored by the workers, efforts to move the fire only spread the blaze to the timbers supporting the mine.

The large fan was reversed in an attempt to blow out the fire, but this only succeeded in igniting the fan house itself as well as the escape ladders and stairs in the secondary shaft, trapping more miners below.

The two shafts were then closed off to smother the fire, but this also had the effect of cutting off oxygen to the miners, and allowing the “black damp,” a suffocating mixture of carbon dioxide and nitrogen, to build up in the mine.

Some 200 men and boys made their way to the surface, some through escape shafts, some using the hoisting cage. Some miners who had already escaped returned to the mine to aid their coworkers. Twelve of these, lead by John Bundy, made six dangerous cage trips, rescuing many others.

The seventh trip, however, proved fatal when the cage operator misunderstood the miners' signals and brought them to the surface too late - the rescuers and those they attempted to rescue were burned to death.



One group of miners trapped in the mine built a makeshift wall to protect themselves from the fire and poisonous gasses. Although without food, they were able to drink from a pool of water leaking from a coal seam moving deeper into the mine to escape the black damp.

Eight days later, the 21 survivors tore down the wall and made their way through the mine in search of more water, but came across a rescue party instead.

Photo: Jeremy Oehlert - June 14, 2007

LINK: Photographs Courtesy of the Library of Congress

LINK: Ray Tutaj Jr. Bio and Videos on YouTube