Near the End of the Era

The picture on the front of this post card was taken in March of 1961. It has

to be one of the very last pictures of the "Big Red Cars" before they succumbed to the freeway system of Southern California. The parent company, Pacific Electric Railway, though, had a good run.
The company was founded in May of 1901 by Isaias Hellman (president of the Nevada Bank - San Francisco's largest bank at that time) and Henry Huntington (nephew of Collis Huntington - one of "the big four" of the Central Pacific Railroad). Henry was also involved in the building of the Santa Monica Wharf, about which I posted a blog on January 29th. The first leg of the railway opened on July 4, 1902. It was an electric railway that ran down to Long Beach. The plan was to build and link almost all of Southern California with intercity electric railways. The owners (and board members) would know what the routes were before the public and they would use third parties to purchase the land along the right of way. They would then build the line and either sell or lease land along the line to interested businesses and residents. They made a lot of money!!! There were competing lines, but in 1911 the eight existing entities were merged into one, Pacific Electric Railway Company. At their height of operations they had over 2,000 daily runs over more than 1,000 miles of tracks. It all came to an end as the freeway system in the Los Angeles basin and surrounding areas dominated the local transportation of choice. It is hard to put an actual date on the end because there is still a commuter system today. Take a look at the description of the Pacific Electric Railway in wikipedia and you will see what I mean.

This post card was published by the Audio Visual Designs Company. Founded in 1964 by the late Carl H. Sturner, Audio-Visual Designs has been a leader in providing high quality railroad images products for over 4 decades. The business was originally located in Earlton, NY. The name was derived by the products sold at the time – audio soundtracks of trains well as visual items (post cards, books, & calendars). The first All Pennsy Calendar was published in 1966 and for many years used exclusively the photos of Don Wood, a long time friend of Carl's. In the late 80's, Carl started showcasing other photographer's work as well. Railroad Christmas cards were added to the line of products early on and with a few exceptions have featured real photos of trains in action. Three railroad books have been published by Audio-Visual Designs: I Remember Pennsy, Locomotives in My Life, and The Unique New York and Long Branch: all of which were projects worked on by Carl and Mr. Wood. Audio-Visual Designs has also published books for other non-railroad related organizations.