Model Railroader – October 2019

October 2019 49

PLANS FOR THE

EAST LOS ANGELES STATION

This mission-revival passenger station was the

Union Pacific’s gateway to Southern California for

more than 40 years • By Bruce Briggs

T

he Union Pacific (UP) East Los Angeles Station

remains a beloved memory from my childhood. On

summer evenings in the 1950s, my parents would

take my brother and me to East L.A. to watch UP’s

streamlined passenger trains. Once when I was 6 or 7

years old, a kindly engineer invited me up to the cab of an

Electro-Motive Division E unit. The streamliners were still

running in 1967 when I spent a happy summer between college

semesters as a switchman in East Yard, just west of the station.

I’m also an avid model railroader, and I just knew that the

station would have to be part of the layout that I plan to

build. This article reflects years spent researching and mak-

ing plans for this someday project.

Southern California traffic jam

By the 1920s, rail passenger service in Southern California

was chaotic. In downtown L.A., the Atchison, Topeka & Santa

Fe Ry. operated La Grande station. Just a few blocks away,

Southern Pacific RR trains terminated at Central Station.

where the Union Pacific subsidiary Los Angeles & Salt Lake RR

(LA&SL) was also a tenant.

Tracks serving Central Station ran down the middle of

Alameda Street. In Long Beach, LA&SL trains ran down the

middle of Ocean Boulevard. The depot was located downtown

and caused traffic jams daily. Southern Pacific and LA&SL

tracks also ran down city streets in Glendale, just north of L.A.

An Astra Dome observation lounge car brings up the rear of the westbound Union Pacific RR City of Los Angeles as it makes a

stop at the East Los Angeles Station in 1955. The station served some of the railroad’s premier passenger trains until the

Amtrak era. Model Railroader collection