Tag Archives: Pacific Electric

Berth Marks 1929

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Metro Goldwyn Mayer

The famous vaudeville comedy act, Laurel & Hardy starred in this early talkie short (19 minutes). Early scenes are filmed at Santa Fe Railway’s La Grande Station in Los Angeles.

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy play, well, themselves with a series of sight gags at the depot and onboard a heavyweight passenger train (partially filmed in the studio). They have tickets for a Pullman “section” set up for night time use (even though it’s broad daylight for the entire trip to “Pottsville”).

Motive power for the train is ATSF #1373, a 1337 class, Baldwin-built (1913), 4-6-2 Pacific. Santa Fe #1373 even has its own locomotive.fandom.com web page!

Will the boys make it to their destination in one piece? Let’s take a peek and see.

The majority of the plot consists of the duo attempting to get into their upper berth, well-illustrated in this movie poster; Not seen in the movie, but in this publicity shot is Stan & Oliver between a pair of outside-braced box cars. The car behind them is lettered “P.E.” for Pacific Electric, a subsidiary of Southern Pacific Railroad.

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Who Framed Roger Rabbit 1988

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Touchstone Pictures

I love cartoons. When this big budget movie collaboration between Lucasfilm and Disney came out back in the 1980’s, I was first in line to see it in the theatre. Looking back now, I realize a major plot point was the demise of Los Angeles’ legendary Pacific Electric railroad system. At the time, many thought the disappearance of the “Red Cars” was a conspiracy by General Motors and the bus companies. The truth was much simpler. People preferred the convenience of their own private cars.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a perfect fit for my obscure train movie blog as the train part is mostly in the background, but comes to the front as the film reaches its climax. The more I researched this movie from a Pacific Electric Red Car standpoint, the more I understood what really happened…and how well filmmakers did reproducing the environment for the time period (late 1940’s).

Replica PE #721 rolls along with some non-paying passengers riding the rear bumper. #721 represents a “Hollywood Car” (600 class, #600-759). Notice its trolley pole is reaching for overhead wires that are not there.

At least one Hollywood Car (PE #655) was saved from the scrap heap and is in the collection of the Southern California Railway Museum.

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Santa Fe 3759 — 2004

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Pentrex – Santa Fe 3759 – Video DVD
Seymour F. Johnson Enterprises – Farewell to Steam! – Audio LP

This is the story of the final run of Santa Fe Railway steam locomotive #3759 in 1955. A 4-8-4 Northern built by Baldwin in 1928, this oil-burning behemoth was saved from the scrapper’s torch and placed on display in Kingman, Arizona where it resides today.

Today’s movie review was inspired by an LP from my father’s record collection — which I literally wore out playing, as a youngster. Loved that record. It wasn’t until later in life that I discovered a great deal of color film footage had been taken of the fan trip and put out on DVD by Pentrex. I had to get a copy.

The harder part was getting a good audio CD to replace the original LP. Apparently, there are two versions out there. The first was the original 1955 sounds put out by Mr. Johnson (see above). The second, more common, was a 1958 remixed album which had the reverb turned up to 11. Awful recording. As someone said, “It sounds like the listener was at the bottom of a steel drum”.

Anyways, Trolley Dodger to the rescue! Offered for sale on his website (see link at the bottom of this review) is an audio CD of the ORIGINAL mono non-reverbed LP. Fantastic sound quality and frequently playing as I drive along in my truck. ;p

For this video review, I created over 200 screen captures, but I’ll try to whittle that down to 65 or less, as #3759 makes it way from Los Angeles Union Passenger Terminal (LAUPT) to Barstow and back. Let’s watch big steam in action over Cajon Pass! In color!

Climbing towards Summit, the Farewell to Steam special passes a beautiful set of A-B-B-A F units on a downhill freight. With the San Gabriel mountains in the background, AT&SF #3759 blasts through a cut during a photo runby.

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Bound For Glory 1976

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United Artists

Four! Count ’em, FOUR steam locomotives star in today’s movie review. Just to whet your appetite, the four steamers are:

  1. Sierra Railroad #3, an 1891 Rogers-built 4-6-0.
  2. Sierra Railroad #28, a 1922 Baldwin-built 2-8-0.
  3. Sierra Railroad #34, a 1925 Baldwin-built 2-8-2.
  4. McCloud River Railroad #25, a 1925 Alco-built 2-6-2.

Today’s feature is a 1930’s biography of folk singer Woody Guthrie (played by David Carradine). Filmmakers really went all-out, pulling 34 obsolete freight cars out of a scrap line and painting over most railroad identification marks.

Train scenes were filmed along the Western Pacific, Tidewater Southern and Sierra Railroads. Let’s jump right in and enjoy THIS TRAIN-laden bio pic.

Electric traction also made a brief appearance in this flick. Woody/David is about to step off Pacific Electric #1058 in Los Angeles on his way to the studio. With a trolley pole reaching for wires that aren’t there, this Red Car had to rely on an internal-combustion engine of some sort.

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Grand Central Murder 1942

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Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Mostly filmed on the MGM lot in Culver City, Grand Central Murder is the tale of a Broadway stage actress who uses and discards people like Kleenex — until someone snaps and bumps her off. But who dunnit? And how? There’s not a mark on her. There IS a list of suspects a mile long.

And oh, what a set. MGM spared no expense using actual railroad passenger cars and a passable recreation of Grand Central Terminal’s underground high-level platforms and third-rail infrastructure. Southern Pacific Railroad’s subsidiary Pacific Electric served Culver City and you can briefly see SP EMD NW2 switcher #1315 shuffling cars around during a couple scenes.

As always, I’ll concentrate on the train bits, but the movie itself is well worth an evening’s viewing. All Aboard!

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Van Heflin (as “Rocky” Custer) checks out the heavyweight Pullman named, “Thanatopsis” for this picture. If you clink the link in the previous sentence, you’ll see it’s a not-so-subtle reference to what takes place on board.

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