BYGONE ERA; REGION NOW MISSING EXTENSIVE RAIL SYSTEM THAT MADE ITS DEVELOPMENT POSSIBLE.

Byline: David Bloom Daily News Staff Writer

IMAGINE a state-of-the-art, environmentally friendly train system that connects Van Nuys, Canoga Park and San Fernando, zipping residents across the Valley and over the hill for a nickel or so.

From the end of World War I and until shortly after the end of World War II, that's the way it was in the Valley.

``It was a great system,'' said Alan Weeks of Eagle Rock, one of the last people to ride the rail line between downtown Los Angeles and Van Nuys. ``It wasn't so bogged down in traffic. It was semi-rapid transit.''

By the 1950s, it was gone. It was a victim of institutional neglect, changing times, Los Angeles' love affair with the car, real estate promoters selling suburban dreams and what some say was a dark corporate conspiracy to kill the trolley cars.

Virtually ever since, Valley leaders have been trying to re-create what rail baron Henry Huntington built in 1911, just as he finished consolidating dozens of small operators into the Pacific Electric Co.

Since the 1980s, the Valley has been promised a high-capacity rail line that would cross the Valley and connect to downtown Los Angeles and beyond, much as the Red Cars did between 1911 and 1952.

But unlike Huntington, today's Valley leaders have yet to find the political will and financial wherewithal to make it happen.

The most recent east-west Valley rail line - a $1.3 billion proposal connecting North Hollywood to the San Diego Freeway - is now all but dead. Julian Burke, interim MTA chief, is expected next month to ask the board to mothball all rail projects other than the Red Line subway extension to North Hollywood now under construction.

If the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board proceeds with plans to build three other rail lines, the agency would go broke within a decade, before it started work on the east-west Valley line, according to a comprehensive Daily News analysis of MTA finances.

Before the MTA's finances were thrown into doubt, Valley rail construction was projected to begin in 2011, exactly 100 years after the first Valley rail system began running.

``It's an interesting bit of deja vu,'' said rail historian Ralph Melching of Pasadena.

Riding the rails

As a youth, Melching and his brother used to ride the Pacific Electric Co.'s Red Cars all over Southern California, including the line that ran from downtown through Hollywood and the Cahuenga Pass to Van Nuys, Canoga Park and San Fernando.

For Melching, a train enthusiast from his youth in Chicago, it was a dream come true. He traipsed from Newport Beach to Redlands and Riverside to the Valley exploring the 1,100-mile Red Car system.

``On Sundays, they had a $1 pass that allowed you to ride anywhere in the system as much as you wanted,'' Melching said. ``My brother and I used to see how many miles we could cover in a single day. I think our record was something like 364 miles.''

Huntington had built the Valley line, and many others, to make his real estate developments viable, said Scott Bottles, author of ``Los Angeles and the Automobile: The Making of a Modern City.''

``They were really a land development tool,'' said Bottles. Huntington ``would use the Pacific Electric to tie his developments to downtown jobs and shopping. Electric street cars were used more as a means of developing real estate rather than as a coherent transportation system.''

Led to Valley development

Huntington's rail lines and water from the newly opened Los Angeles Aqueduct made development in the Valley possible, said Jim Walker of Burbank, retired editor of numerous rail history periodicals and books.

``The rail line changed the character of the area, so all the rural areas were soon gone,'' said Walker. ``The Red Car made possible the growth of Southern California.''

The rail lines also made money from hauling freight, particularly in the early years when areas such as the Valley were still isolated and largely agricultural, said Linda Barth, director of the Travel Town Museum in Griffith Park. The museum is putting together an exhibit on the Red Car for a new building it expects to open in about a year.

``The reason they could do it is that they weren't relying on people to make money,'' Barth said. ``It was freight. After people went to sleep, all night long the trains were hauling the mail and oranges and freight. This wasn't for people, though people rode it too. The money was in moving those oranges.''

Huntington's original line to Van Nuys grew again in 1913, with one branch heading west to Canoga Park, another north in a winding route to San Fernando.

``There once was a real system here, a real grid,'' said retired political consultant Joe Scott. ``There was a rail system here that was pretty effective.''

Buses were cheaper

By 1915, however, Huntington and other developers stopped building new rail lines, Bottle said, because buses could provide the same downtown access with far less capital expense.

Thus began the rail system's long, slow decline, though for years it wouldn't be apparent to anyone.

It would be several years even before the burgeoning population, and the region's nation-leading rate of auto ownership, would start to snarl the trolleys.

``The real bottleneck was in downtown,'' where streetcars, autos and pedestrians vied with each other, Melching said.

The trolleys were heated in wintertime, and were relatively comfortable then, Melching said. But in the summer, with no air conditioning or other cooling systems, they could be abominably hot.

And over the years, the system went downhill, as competing bus lines ate into profits, more people turned to cars and freight service was less needed.

The cash-starved Pacific Electric increasingly neglected its system, failing to maintain or improve the system, angering many riders.

``By the time the 1930s rolled around, they had let the track go to hell and they weren't doing maintenance,'' said Melching. ``You take a rail line laid in 1903 and even by 1933, the ride's pretty bumpy.''

The San Fernando line had been struggling for some time from competition by a bus line running up San Fernando Road that offered more direct and speedy service to downtown.

Then, in 1938, heavy flooding washed out a bridge on the line just west of Van Nuys Boulevard. Rather than fix the bridge, Pacific Electric shut down the branches to San Fernando and Canoga Park.

``Eventually, the PE considered them both to be losers and cut them both,'' Melching said.

The system did get some improvements just before World War II, and rationing of gasoline and rubber during the war sent ridership skyward. But after the war, the love affair with the car took off.

Some have also blamed the demise of rail in Los Angeles on an alleged bus conspiracy backed by five companies - Standard Oil, Phillips Petroleum, General Motors, Mack Trucks and Firestone Rubber Co.

The five companies did help bankroll National City Lines and American City Lines in their takeover of a number of rail operators around the country, including Pacific Electric's sister company, the Los Angeles Rail Co.

In each case, Bottles said, National City Lines converted rail lines to bus lines. And National City Lines had an agreement with the bus, oil and tire companies to use only their products and to convert systems from rail to bus.

But it was not a destructive conspiracy, Bottles said. ``This system had died already,'' he said. ``It wasn't the reason the lines died.''

The last ride

The last run of the line to Van Nuys was just after Christmas in 1952. Following behind that last car, about 1 a.m., in another specially chartered car, was Alan Weeks and a group of other mournful rail enthusiasts.

``It was kind of a sad occasion,'' Weeks said. ``We would never see the train again. The next day, the Chamber of Commerce chartered another car from Van Nuys to downtown, then they turned off the power at about 3 p.m.''

In June 1955, the much busier line to Burbank and Glendale also was shut down.

The last of the lines to go, between Long Beach and downtown Los Angeles, closed in 1961. About 30 years later, almost exactly the same route was used when the county Metropolitan Transportation Authority began running the Blue Line light-rail system between the downtowns of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

``They stopped it,'' Scott said. ``All of sudden, it was just killed. The irony is, now it's coming back.''

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos, chart, map

PHOTO (1) From 1911 to 1952, Pacific Electric Red Cars carried passengers daily between the still largely rural Valley and downtown Los Angeles.

Ralph Melching/Special to the Daily News

(2) During the snowstorm of 1949, a Pacific Electric Red Car trolley rolls through North Hollywood near Riverside Drive.

Ralph Melching/Special to the Daily News

Chart: Mileage table (as of June, 1929)

Map: Lines of the Pacific Electric Railway to the San Fernando Valley