Visit to Orange Empire - Part II

Frank writes...

Continued from Part I, after touring the LARy shop and the two largest barns at the museum, it was on to the older traction barns. First up was Abbenseth Carbarn, which is the main operating barn for the standard-gauge collection.

You wouldn't think it but this Birney is Pacific Electric 332, built in 1918 by Brill. Two of the PE's Birneys, 331 and 332, were retired in 1940 and purchased by MGM Studios for use as film props. Notably they were featured in "Singin' in the Rain." In 1966 both cars were acquired by OERM, which got 331 running and used it for many years. Car 332 languished, though, and in 1985 it was loaned - in complete but badly deteriorated condition - to Old Pueblo Trolley in Tucson. OPT at the time was trying to start a heritage streetcar service on a stretch of original Tucson streetcar tracks but they needed a streetcar. So their volunteers spent seven years getting car 332 completely restored and painted as Tucson Street Railway 10. This car inaugurated historic streetcar service in Tucson around 1992; I vaguely remember getting a chance to ride the car in Tucson around that time. Anyway, the loan was for just ten years so OPT only got to use their restored car for a couple of years before it returned home to Orange Empire! It has seen regular use since but hasn't yet been repainted in correct PE red. Behind it, out of sight, is PE 717, another "Hollywood" car but one that is kind of the IT 415 of Orange Empire - a regular service car that seems like it's always been a regular service car. It used to be painted in inaccurate "Valley Seven" colors with cream along the windows but a couple of years ago was given a gorgeous paint job in original dark red livery. Unfortunately quarters in the barn were cramped enough that I couldn't get even a halfway decent photo.

Here's a hometown favorite for David - Bamberger 127, one of the famous Brill "Bullet" cars originally built for the Fonda Johnstown & Gloversville in New York in 1932. Retired in 1953, its body was a worker dorm at the Utah Pickle Company until OERM got the car in 1971. This car was largely cosmetically restored in the 1990s and early 2000s but restoration work is currently on hiatus. Parts are on hand, though, to recreate correct-type trucks for the car.

This is San Diego Electric Railway 508, a 1936 St. Louis-built PCC car that is currently undergoing a major restoration. (And in the doorway that's Dennis, the volunteer docent who showed me through the car barns.) This is the car whose trucks are currently in the machine shop. It looks absolutely gorgeous and will be a real showpiece when complete. Off to the right is Pacific Electric 1624, a steeplecab homebuilt by PE in 1925 to a Baldwin design. Out of view to the right is Yakima 297, the only other surviving Baldwin-Westinghouse B-1 steeplecab besides IRM's own Cornwall 14.

The interior of car 508, with all new paint and upholstery. It's an impressive restoration.

After this it was back to narrow-gauge land with a stop at the main LARy car barn. This is the famous street railway funeral car "Descanso," homebuilt by LARy in 1909. It's a beautiful car and was a rare LARy car with a railroad roof. It was retired in 1940, sold to the Pacific Railroad Society, and moved, complete save motors, to Cajon Pass where it was used as a clubhouse for railfans and photographers. There it stayed until coming to Orange Empire in 1967. It's still owned by PRRS.

Car 1559 is the only surviving example of the K-type LARy car, a development of the earlier H-type, of which several examples still exist. It was built in 1925 in the LARy shops. Note the "California car" design with the open section. Anyway, this car seems to have a double identity at the moment, as it's mostly painted in 1920s-era LARy yellow and brown but retains its 1940s-era Los Angeles Transit Lines skirting on the end.

A better exemplar of the ungainly LATL look is car 1160, the only surviving F-type car, rebuilt by LARy in 1923 from an earlier 1899-vintage car (note the omnibus sides). When LATL took over from LARy in 1945 they introduced the yellow/green/white "fruit salad" livery in place of the yellow/silver/black LARy livery then in use and introduced this end skirting and drop-down catchers in place of the old Eclipse fenders.

An oddity among a barn full of Los Angeles streetcars is Kyoto 19, a 1910 single-trucker from Japan. This car has run at OERM and is quite original, complete with all of its advertising cards in Japanese.

Behind it is Los Angeles Railway 9209, built in the company shops in 1913, which is what LARy called a "power car." Basically it's a two-cab-on-flat utility motor and would have seen a variety of uses. These cars had a very unusual cab design, with an extra-height "tower" cab at each end that presumably gave a wider field of vision. This car has been semi-disassembled for many years but is generally complete.

Next to the power car is LARy 936, C-type center-entrance car built by St. Louis in 1913. Like so many cities Los Angeles flirted with center-entrance cars in the mid-teens but, like most other cities, decided they didn't like them much. The C-type cars were nicknamed "sow-bellies" for their drop center appearance and were retired early, 1945 in the case of car 936. Its body was acquired by Orange Empire in 1979 and appears to be in decent condition as bodies go.

Just to the north of the LARy barn, on the other side of the streetcar line (which is dual-gauge at this point), is this impressive archives building. It also houses some historic materials pertaining to the Fred Harvey Company. It sounded like the building is not normally open; my docent had never been inside.

And then there's the famous Grizzly Flats collection of 3'-gauge equipment obtained from the Ward Kimball estate. Some of this equipment is very impressive and most of it is very old. It's almost all housed in a beautiful, relatively new, exhibit building north of the depot just off the museum's main line.

I'm not a big narrow gauge fan but a couple of things caught my eye. One was this car body, which dated to the 1870s if memory serves, which when acquired had suffered significant damage at one corner from woodpeckers. Well that's different.

The pride of the collection is the Nevada Central's "Emma Nevada," a beautiful little 2-6-0 built in 1881 by Baldwin which at the moment is an 0-0-0 because it's up on blocks for some sort of wheel work.

They've thoughtfully put a light in the firebox which the docents can flip on, and there's a sign conveniently placed where it will appear prominently in a lot of visitor photos, not usually signs of a quick turnaround restoration. When this engine does run, though, it will be a thing of real beauty.

Dennis, my tour guide, had to head off and show another group of visitors around so I decided to wander around by myself. Of course I had to visit the "body farm" at the back of the property. OERM has done a very good job of keeping most of their car bodies tarped, and their Visalia Electric wooden interurban car even had something of a building built around it, visible on the left. The car in the center, though, defies tarping due to its condition - but probably wouldn't benefit that much from it anyway. It's the only preserved "hobbleskirt" car: Fresno Traction 51, built by Brill in 1913. These cars were most famously run by New York Railways in Manhattan, where they operated using the conduit system there, but a couple of other cities - including Fresno - also ran them. It's a fascinating car; the expansive drop center fills nearly all of the space between the trucks, which themselves are pushed out towards the ends of the car, making for rather high-mounted cabs. Space under the car was so limited that these cars had no main air reservoirs but just had large-diameter pipes going back and forth in the ceiling to hold air. Car 51 may look sad but it sure is historic.

OERM has three "Huntington standard" LARy streetcar bodies, 744, 807, and 860, of which two were tarped. This is the third - anyone know what its number is?

This is an H-class LARy car built in 1924 by St. Louis. It has a strange history; retired by LATL in 1959 it was purchased by an individual but moved to Orange Empire. In 1975, apparently, OERM changed their policy regarding storage of privately-owned equipment (sound familiar?) and while most affected equipment was subsequently donated to the museum, this car wasn't. Instead it was shipped north where it hit a bridge which partially scalped it. It ended up at Muni, which stripped it for motors and control equipment to be used on a Johnstown streetcar, and then went to Lake Tahoe where it sat in the woods there until 1999. For a while it was stored in downtown Los Angeles until it finally returned to Orange Empire in 2016, this time owned by the museum but little more than a shell. The museum, which has three other H-class cars, two of which run, evidently plans to scrap or sell the car.

Orange Empire runs Day Out With Thomas, as does IRM, and as for us it's a big money-maker. However when they started running the event they didn't have the large fleet of passenger coaches that we did, so they had to scramble to find cars with enough seats to handle the crowds. This meant acquisition of a Lackawanna MU trailer, a couple of lightweight commuter coaches from Montreal, and most recently no fewer than ten "Comet" commuter cars from New Jersey Transit. Of those, four are coaches which are in use while six are less-than-pristine cab cars which were not really wanted but came along as part of the deal anyway. Anyone want a cab car?

One of the unique pieces of equipment at OERM is this steeplecab, Hutchinson & Northern 1, built by GE in 1921. GE only built a couple of these locomotives with inside-bearing trucks; the Lackawanna actually had one that they used at their Wallabout Terminal in New York (a different solution to the same problem our Ingersoll-Rand diesel solved for the DL&W) while two others ended up with the H&N. Both H&N locomotives still survive, the other at the Kansas Underground Salt Museum in Hutchinson, which sounds like a rollicking good time.

Here's a shot looking north/northwest up Broadway. It's a nice street scene, sparsely lined with buildings by Midwest standards but more typical for the Los Angeles area I think. The 3'6" gauge line coming in from the right isn't service trackage; it goes up to the car barn, on the east side of the street in the distance. The streetcar loop crosses Broadway at two points, right about where I was standing and again just north of the LARy car barn, and stops behind the depot off behind that white building on the left.

And we're right about back where we started in Part I, at the center of the museum, at the corner of Broadway and Central Avenue. The southeast corner of this intersection is where that road construction equipment is on display, and just south of that, the city park with the caboose; on the northeast corner is this "signal garden" and a frame building which houses the museum office. Confused yet? You'll just need to go to Orange Empire and see for yourself.

Many thanks to Hank and Dennis for the tour and to John Smatlak for helping set things up!