Lamanda Park Tower
Ernie M. Leo Photo, Jack Finn Collection, PERYHS Collection
Heading outbound past the Lamanda Park Tower, a hazy day hides the nearby mountains as the PE heads up north Sierra Madre Boulevard past the Santa Fe tracks parallel to Walnut Street on its way to Sierra Madre on Thursday, October 5, 1950.
Ernie M. Leo Photo, Jack Finn Collection, PERYHS Collection
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Definitely a hazy day, its the day before the end of service on the Sierra Madre line! This is probably a fan trip, as the car is almost full and there are people standing in the rear vestibule.
One of those “changed beyond recognition” scenes. The property behind the photograper to the left has seen multiple uses since 1950, and is now on its second supermarket. When I was a wee lad, the northern portion was occupied by a small fun-rides operation called Tinker Town. It even had a scaled-down version of a streetcar, running on a circular train. When I rode it, I was rather dismayed to find that the “controls” in the front of the car were “dummies” and didn’t really do anything. This frustration from childhood was finally remedied when I joined Orange Empire and learned how to run the real thing.
After the Sierra Madre Line was abandoned in 1950, and the Monrovia-Glendora Line quit in 1951, both the Lamanda Park and Arcadia towers, and their associated crossing diamonds were no longer needed. Maybe it was just coincidence, but a lot of the Santa Fe rail along the 2nd District was rolled in 1953, so one might wonder if ATSF took advantage of the PE abandonments to “straight rail” and upgrade their track. Now that rail (and some newer steel) is being removed to make way for the Gold Line Foothill Extension, bringing electric railway service back to Arcadia, Azusa and points in between.