Visit to Orange Empire - Part I

Frank writes...

I'd been hoping to make it out to IRM today but the snow has other ideas. So I'm reduced to sitting at home and wistfully thinking of warmer times. Like a week ago, when I had a chance to visit the Orange Empire Railway Museum during a business trip to Los Angeles.

This was my second visit to Orange Empire; my first was a brief stop about 13 years ago. This visit was also brief, and I was there on a Thursday when nothing was running, but it was very enjoyable and interesting. Orange Empire is probably more similar to IRM in terms of appearance, and perhaps visitor experience, than any other museum. It has a large "campus" layout with numerous exhibit and storage barns plus it is the only other museum besides IRM that has significant collections of electric cars, steam engines, and diesel locomotives. That said, it's much smaller than IRM - I think the collection is about half the size - and has some unique characteristics such as three different track gauges. But let's get started with the tour

Entering the museum, one almost immediately comes upon this attractive depot. It's where the ticket office and gift shop are located. The tracks in the foreground are the main line, which is a little over a mile in length and goes north into the center of the town of Perris. The museum is on the edge of town but is mostly surrounded by industry in one direction and houses in another.

Behind the depot is a small park and then you find Broadway, the museum's street scene - more on that in Part II. On the east side of Broadway is this imitation city park, complete with caboose (SP, I assume) and some playground stuff.

On the street corner in the middle of the museum along Broadway is this display of what looks to be road construction equipment. They're interesting artifacts but your guess is as good as mine as to exactly why they're here.

The museum's full-time General Manager, Hank, was kind enough to take a few minutes and show me around some of the shop areas. The museum's machine shop, shown here with Hank on the right, is quite impressive. It's housed in a building which I believe was already here when the museum arrived and includes a wide variety of machines, virtually all of them usable according to Hank. He said that he only wished they had enough volunteers to keep these machines busy. If there's one thing that's consistent across all railway museums, it's that we never have enough money or volunteers!

In fact the machine shop was so large it had its own ride-on floor cleaner, this Zamboni-looking thing. What do you think Joel, a new item for the shopping list?

These trucks, which I think Hank said were for the San Diego prewar PCC (stay tuned), were in the shop also. Note the crane in the background which was installed by the museum complete with its own foundation. Hank also showed me the wood shop but that was a smaller space and not as photogenic.

After that, it was off for a tour of the equipment barns. The first stop was the Los Angeles Railway shop building. LARy was one of two major U.S. street railway systems (the other being Denver) to use a gauge of 3'6". At Orange Empire, which has an unparalleled collection of LARy equipment including at least one example of every significant type of streetcar the system ever ran (!), they have a 3'6" gauge streetcar loop located east of the standard gauge main line. There's a fair amount of dual-gauge trackage at the museum too which is something to see. Anyway, the car above is LARy 665, a "Huntington Standard" car built by St. Louis Car Company in 1911 which was retired in 1948. It was bought by 20th Century Fox and used as a movie prop until the museum got it in 1967. It's long been in service at the museum, restored to its 1920s-1930s LARy appearance, but is currently undergoing a "sprucing up."

Behind it on the same track is LARy 9550, a single-truck shop switcher of the "flying brick" variety. This one is rather attractive, though, with a nice deck roof. It's been mostly disassembled for many years. Behind it on the other track is Los Angeles Railways 9351, an open line car. This is an interesting piece, basically a two-cab-on-flat car with an adjustable-height platform tower in the center and an overall roof. Other than the line car features it's rather close to the original appearance of our own Milwaukee Electric D22.

Next to the 665 is Los Angeles Transit Lines 2601, a double-ended Peter Witt built in 1930. This was a unique prototype and it's amazing it survived intact. It has been the subject of a long but steady restoration project over the past decade or two. It's also one of the most modern pre-PCC streetcars in existence, sharing some modern features with the Baltimore Witts built at the same time such as Westinghouse VA control.

Next up is the "new" barn, the behemoth Barn 7 built about a decade ago. This building, which has a steel frame and concrete floors, is a real blimp hangar at 600' long and six tracks wide. Most of the "front" (south) half of the structure is taken up with steam railroad equipment while the back half is largely unrestored electric cars. Up near the doors is this, the current big project of the OERM diesel division: Santa Fe FP45 108, identical to our own 92. I believe this unit runs (unlike ours, it was retired operational) and it's been the focus of a stunning restoration project that has seen its body panels replaced and a lot of work done to backdate it to as-built condition. It's also received a beautiful paint job. They've been busy painting diesels at Orange Empire; there was also an SP U-boat and a UP E-9 in this building that had recently been repainted.

Another locomotive duplicated at IRM is this Alco RSD-15 "Alligator," of which OERM has two. However theirs are ex-Southern Pacific whereas IRM's example is ex-Santa Fe. I'm not sure whether or not theirs run.

I've developed a slight interest recently in early freight cars and Orange Empire has them in abundance. This nicely painted example is Butte Anaconda & Pacific 22, a 1906 Pressed Steel-built car acquired in 2009 complete with its original Fox trucks.

And of course the pride of the steam road collection: Virginia & Truckee 20, built in 1907 by the Hicks Locomotive & Car Works. More information here.

This classic is Denver & Rio Grande Western 552, an open-platform combine built by Pullman in 1891. Those steel panels on the sides are kind of weird.

And here we are 600' away from the Santa Fe FP45, at the back of the blimp hangar with Key System "Bridge Unit" 167. There are four of these two-car articulateds in existence, this one and three at Rio Vista. Two of the Rio Vista ones run but I believe this one has a blown motor.

On the next track over is a real interurban classic, Pacific Electric 993. The PE 950-series cars were built in 1907 by St. Louis for the Los Angeles Pacific and, as built, were "California cars" with a large open section. This was later closed in, of course, as shown. But these cars eschewed the five-window Huntington end preferred by PE and LARy and ran their entire lives with the more Midwestern-looking appearance shown here. None were preserved intact.

Orange Empire has no fewer than four Pacific Electric "fives," 500-series suburban cars built in 1909 by St. Louis Car Company. Three of them are in Barn 7. This one is PE 524, which was partially restored by Richard Fellows before his death and was acquired by OERM in 1996.

San Diego Electric Railway 528 is a very early PCC car, dating to 1936 and one of the first handful of orders for PCC cars. This isn't the car whose trucks are in the workshop; Orange Empire has two cars of this series that were acquired straight from San Diego. Car 528 still wears two different service liveries, or what remains of them, including a white-with-black-belt-rail livery on top and underneath it the obvious remnants of its original olive green with red roof color scheme. The museum's other San Diego PCC has been repainted to that latter color scheme.

Along with four PE "fives" the museum also has five PE "Hollywood" cars, and of those three are stored all in a row in this barn too. For many years the two cars shown here, 716 and 637, were prominently displayed along Broadway; unfortunately that didn't do any favors for their paint so they're a bit tired looking now. But they're indoors and well taken care of. Car 5123, barely visible on the right, is unrestored.

This double-truck Birney body is Fresno Traction 83, built by St. Louis in 1925. Fresno gave all of its Birneys this unusual "swollen lip" extended bumper for some reason.

Here's the second PE "Five," and the only one preserved complete, car 538. Unfortunately it was a victim of an unfinished restoration at some point but I believe there are plans being developed to reassemble this car and complete it. This car was retired extremely early for an intact survivor, 1937, which is when Warner Brothers acquired it for use as a prop. The museum got it from the movie studio in 1959.

Pacific Electric 1000, the "Commodore," was the line's business car until supplanted by steel car 1299 (also at Orange Empire - stay tuned). It was built in 1913 by Jewett as a coach, one of the "Tens," and rebuilt as a business car the next year. It was retired in 1947 but the body was acquired by OERM in 1964.

And here's the third PE "Five," car 530. This one was retired in 1937, like car 538, but unlike that fortunate example it became a house. The body was acquired by Orange Empire in 2007. As bodies go it's in pretty decent shape, actually, though with three other examples on the property - including two that are arguably closer to "restored" condition - it's hard to say what will happen with it.

In the far back corner of the blimp hangar is this unfortunate looking specimen, Pacific Electric 00150. It's a cab-on-flat wire greaser and was rebuilt by Los Angeles Pacific in 1898 from a flatcar. Unfortunately it suffered from decades of outdoor storage but when this barn was built it was stabilized using rails atop the deck and moved into the barn.

Next to it is this horsecar, which is odd because the museum has no idea where it's from or who built it. It was acquired from Knott's Berry Farm where it had been something of a playground attraction for many decades.

This is a neat car: Pacific Electric 179, built in 1912 by Pullman. These center-entrance suburban cars were rather unique. They used some aspects of Harriman passenger car design including steel roofs, unusual for electric cars. They weren't terribly loved by the PE - most center-entrance cars weren't after that fad ended - and this one was retired in 1935. The museum got it in 1974. It's really in pretty good shape overall, with very little body rust evident, but of course would need a huge amount of work to ever run again. Still, it's a fascinating artifact.

This is San Diego Electric Railway 167, a center entrance car body of a design used almost exclusively by that city.

This is an intriguing piece: a 1910 parlor-observation car built by Pullman for the Santa Fe (of course - note the exposed side sill) and later sheathed in steel. Later yet it made it into MOW service and eventually found its way to Orange Empire. Boy would this look neat next to our Santa Fe lounge and combine!

So that was it for the new blimp hangar - next it was over to the next-newest barn at the museum, an operating building at the south end of the property. At the front was this attractively-painted Pacific Electric "blimp" coach built by Pullman in 1913 for the Interurban Electric Railway. It's hard to believe this car is a year older than our own CA&E 319.

And behind it on the same track was "blimp" combine 498, also built in 1913 for IER, and just recently painted in later PE colors. This car has been the focus of a long-term restoration and it looks like they're making excellent progress.

This car is a favorite of mine: PE 1001, the only "Ten" surviving intact. It was built by Jewett in 1913. The PE liked wood cars and would have continued to build them if it hadn't been for a bad wreck shortly after these cars were delivered; with that they went to steel cars for the "Elevens" and "Twelves." Anyway, this car was retired from passenger service in 1948 and made into a rail grinder, which preserved it until acquired by the museum in 1954.

Just like our cars, PE 1001 has a J-type governor. Unlike ours, it's mounted outside the car. I guess when it never freezes, you don't have to worry about putting the governor inside the car to keep it working properly. I think that mounting J-governors vertically like this was recommended, but on the CA&E at least they put them under the nickel seats so there wasn't room to do this.

One of the car's trucks was heavily modified for rail grinding and those modifications are still very obvious. There's a lot of extra steel in this truck!

This is the only existing PE "Twelve" that is complete, office car 1299. It's not a "true" PE "Twelve" as it wasn't from the series built for the PE; those were all scrapped. This car was built in 1914 by Pullman for the Portland Eugene & Eastern and came to the PE in 1929, when it was rebuilt as an office car. Retired in 1958, it was on display at the Pomona fairgrounds until OERM got it in 1998.

And next to that high-stepper is a horse of a very different color: Hill of Howth Tramway 2 from Ireland. Built in 1901, it ran until 1959 when that line shut down. It's one of four Howth trams in existence; a car of a different series at the National Tramway Museum in Crich is preserved in overall varnished teak, which is quite striking.

Another member of Orange Empire's impressive collection of old freight cars is this boxcar, Tonopah & Tidewater 111, built in 1885 for the Lackawanna as their 20460 (later DL&W 32474). It came to OERM in 1983 as a body and is one of very few 1880s boxcars in existence.

And Ventury County Railroad 22, a 2-6-2 built in 1922, is Orange Empire's main operating steam engine (and I think the only steam engine to have operated at the museum). I believe it's operational but I'm not sure when it was last steamed; it was in use as recently as 2014 at least. It's a pretty ideal engine for a museum like OERM, small but with good pulling power. It's not too dissimilar from Tuskeegee 101 that IRM used to run.

And that's it for Part I... stay tuned for Part II from Perris.