Hello, Having gone to Los Angeles on short visits with my dad in his long line of Buick sedans was always a treat. He took us to the large Los Angeles Union Station near the downtown area. Since we were electric train kids using the expanded set over and over, it was a great rainy day activity. Most of our friends had the same gauge of electric trains and sets, so when it was play time, the combination of each kit and model trains were made into larger winding tracks that made things interesting in someone's living room floor. We always saw the freight trains heading inland behind our first Craftsman House, near the Terminal Island Freeway. There was enough space between the tracks, the freeway, a huge dirt/grassy field and our homes to keep the noise to less than a minimum. The hot rod folks accelerating on the Terminal Island Freeway were the noisiest of all… Ha! The main road on which we drove from our house in Long Beach to Los Angeles ended up right in front of the Union Station building. Prior to the building of the freeways, we took this road up to Los Angeles and back home to Long Beach. It was the only way to get to downtown Los Angeles directly from our Long Beach house. If we did not take the red car train as a different way to get there for our visits. The road, Alameda Street, in later years, was the major Western street border of the Lion’s Dragstrip from the grand opening in 1955 to this day. If you were sitting in the tower side stands, you could see Alameda Street in the background to the West. On our first visit, it was a giant train station with live, life-sized trains coming and going with a ton of passengers getting onboard and walking through the cavernous building. We definitely were impressed. But, as impressed with our visit to the massive train station, North from the Union Station was a short walk to our favorite Los Angeles restaurant, the original Phillipe’s famous French Dipped Sandwich location. It was about a quarter mile walk to that location. The rest of the sight seeing was nothing, as we savored the French Dipped sandwiches for the rest of the day. Jnaki When our own son was in elementary school, several of our friends from our neighborhood decided to take our young kids on an actual train ride up to Los Angeles and visit the area of the Union Station. Olvera Street, surrounding city cultural centers and parks were on the itinerary. Our main destination was the Los Angeles Children’s Museum, a short walk from the train station. It was fun riding the train from the station near our house in Orange County beach location. The train went through areas we saw from our cars on the trips to Los Angeles on the roadways + freeways. But, they did go through areas we had never seen before, small communities, factory shops and industrial business complex building areas were all part of a new look at the greater Los Angeles area. We felt like commuters from the outskirts to the bustling downtown city confines. We saw all of the areas of where we normally see cars and buildings along the freeway to Los Angeles, but from a different perspective of a moving train. YRMV
The Jalopy Journal
