WORKING IN LONG BEACH 
Pacific Electric Railway

Wikipedia tells us “the Pacific Electric Railroad was created in 1901 by railroad executive Henry Huntington and banker Isaias W. Hellman. Pacific Electric was the largest electric rail system in the world in the 1920s. The Long Beach Line, the last line to be replaced by buses, was a major interurban commuter route operated by the Pacific Electric Railway between Los Angeles and Long Beach, California, via Florence, Watts, and Compton. Service began in 1902 and lasted until 1961.”

If your ancestor worked for the PER as a motorman, conductor, station clerk, agent, or in any other position, you might find him mentioned in the following online resources:

Pacific Electric Railway Historical Society

http://www.pacificelectric.org/

This website is filled with articles, photographs and maps. It contains a staggering amount of information, yet is very easy to use. Many collectors of PER memorabilia have digitized their photos and contributed the images to PERyHS. 

L. A. County Metropolitan Transportation Authority Research Library and Archive 

http://lacmtalibrary.tumblr.com/

A searchable blog from the largest transit operator research collection in the U. S. 

Dorothy Peyton Gray Transportation Library

http://www.metro.net/about/library/

This website has digitized images and articles from the Pacific Electric employee magazine as well as information about the company from other sources.

Pacific Electric Employee Magazines 

1941: http://libraryarchives.metro.net/DPGTL/employeenews/PE_Mag_1941_Mar.pdf

1947: http://libraryarchives.metro.net/DPGTL/employeenews/PE_Mag_1947_Jul-Aug.pdf

These pdfs of the March 1941 and July-August 1947 issues have pictures of crews, retirement lists, death lists, articles about railway routes, and reports about activities of the employees.

Other Resources:

The Online Archive of California list several repositories that house collections of Pacific Electric documents and photographs at http://www.oac.cdlib.org/search?query=Pacific+Electric&x=14&y=9.

Pacific Electric’s Santa Ana Line and Los Angeles Railway’s J & V Lines, by Matthew Barrett, has a “family tree” of the Southern California transit system. Available in pdf format at http://eco-rapid.org/Project/studies_reports/WestSantaAna_LA.pdf.

Ride The Last Red Car Los Angeles April 1961 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebboO52In1w&feature=youtu.be

This video takes you on the last run made from Los Angeles to Long Beach.

RESEARCH TIP: For information re: the Pacific Electric Railway in general, start with Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Electric. Be sure to visit each of the 15 external links/webpages listed at the end of the article to see photos and read more about the history of this transportation system.