The Last Trolley Stop Gets a Token of Esteem

Back in 1913, when the Pacific Electric Trolley Station in Van Nuys opened, a conductor could stand on its wooden platform, glance quickly at his open-faced pocket watch, and view nothing but a fast-arriving red trolley car moving on tracks through lush onion fields.

But in 1988, at Saturday’s 75th anniversary celebration of the only remaining trolley station in the San Fernando Valley, cars whizzed by on busy Sherman Way and train enthusiasts were sorely outnumbered by antique car buffs.

In a scene perhaps representative of the usurpation of trolleys by the automobile, the vintage-car owners filled the front yard of the station with their Studebakers and Model T Fords.

The celebration came in a year when controversial plans to recreate the trolley system in Los Angeles County--and to give it the stuffier, more modern name of “light rail”--have been accelerating. A panel established by the Los Angeles City Council in March has until Aug. 1 to determine what, if any, light-rail route should be established in the Valley.

Held among relics of the “Red Cars,” as Los Angeles’ trolley cars once were known, and against a background of nostalgic music by a ragtime jazz band, the celebration at the former trolley station focused on the past, not the future.

Bought in 1952

Organized by Philip Saylor, whose father bought the trolley station building in 1952 and turned it into the antique shop it is today, the event drew dozens of enthusiasts as well as two City Council members to declare the building a Los Angeles city historic landmark. Saylor said he plans to open a museum dedicated to the trolley system in one room of the former station next fall.

“My dad kept it this way for 30 years because he had a personal love for it,” Saylor said. “It was only in the last 10 years of his life that people began to realize he was saving something special. It was his dream then, and it is our dream now.”

The station, a plain, one-story building, is unspectacular on the outside, but inside, its intricate beamed ceilings and restored wooden floors frame a collection of antiques and train-oriented collectibles.

In one corner stands the station’s original telegraph and ticketing office. In the center of the station sits a potbellied stove around which passengers used to sit while waiting for the Red Cars to carry them to downtown Los Angeles.

“Pleasure routes to your happiest vacation spots!” reads a 1915 train schedule encased in glass at the station. And a sign posted on the wall proclaims: “Men should never run after a street car or a woman, there’ll be another along in a minute.”

Trolley Museum

To protect those and other trolley-era mementos, five historic preservation groups have contributed funds to the trolley museum.

“The railroad built America,” said railroad buff Jim Haynes, dressed in old-fashioned striped trousers and a bow tie. “It opened the frontier to society, to industry, to everything. This is one of the few places in Southern California where you can see what it was before being destroyed by the passage of time.”

Many of the same people who are interested in the old trolleys also enjoy antique cars, Saylor said, which explained the 17 vintage cars parked at the former station.

Jan Hardin, 72, dressed as a 1920s flapper, stood by as her husband polished his 1921 Dodge.

“I had to follow my husband here,” she said of the gathering. “We do this every weekend.”