A Los Angeles Railway Yellow Car rides southbound at Crenshaw Boulevard at 54th Street in 1954.
Weeks would then take the trolley to school, Audubon Junior High off Crenshaw Boulevard near Leimert Boulevard and Stocker Street.“When I would get off from school I’d get an ice cream cone,” he said, adding that weekends made for different trips. “My mom took me on the trolley when she would go downtown. I was 8 or 9 years old. We went to Main Street to Bullock’s,” he said.
While the Pacific Electric Red Cars are better known, thanks in part to being featured in the 1988 Disney movie “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” the LARy gets little attention. Barrett said he knows of only two books written about the inner-city L.A. Railway. This is the first exhibit on the L.A. Railway Yellow Cars put on by LA Metro.
The stories put on display are intertwined with a complicated history of what eventually became the world’s largest electric trolley system, and later to become the world’s largest highway system. In 1928, about 50% of Angelenos owned a car, a tipping point in the changeover to automobiles gliding on thousands of miles of concrete highways and freeways.
Some point to the economics of keeping up electric power plants. Others said the automobile became a status symbol of personal wealth. Even buses grew more popular. The early transit companies launched a double-decker bus that was open on top. Barrett said his grandmother told him she’d take it to the Coconut Grove at the Ambassador Hotel. As the open-air bus approached, she could hear the orchestra playing from her seat.