> In Los Angelas in the late 50's / early 60"s the suburban train
> services were sold to a company that made buses, which promptly closed
> everything and replaced the trains with thier own buses!!!!
<sigh> Oh no not again!
The majority of the "Pacific Electric" interurban routes were
abandoned between the end of WW II and 1953, while PE under control of
the Southern Pacific Railroad Corporation, as it had been since "the
great merger" of 1911.
The remaining Pacific Electric rail routes lines were sold to
Metropolitan Coach Lines in 1953. MCL managed to abandon only two
rail routes in its period of control from 1953 to 1958, one of which
was a forced abandonment due to freeway construction by government
authorities which cut across and partially obliterated the route of
the rail line.
In 1958 the remaining former PE rail routes were taken over by a
government body, the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority. The
LAMTA continued to close the remaining rail routes until the last
route to Long Beach line shut down in 1961.
Fortunately, most of the Long Beach route right of way survived as a
freight rail route and was reopened as a new electric Light Rail route
during the 1980s by one of the LAMTAs successors.
Cheers,
Bill
Bill Bolton
Sydney, Australia