Orange Empire Railway Museum
The Southern California Railway Museum (SCRM, reporting mark OERX), formerly known as the Orange Empire Railway Museum, is a railroad museum in Perris, California, United States. It was founded in 1956 at Griffith Park in Los Angeles before moving to the former Pinacate Station as the "Orange Empire Trolley Museum" in 1958. It was renamed "Orange Empire Railway Museum" in 1975 after merging with a museum then known as the California Southern Railroad Museum, and adopted its current name in 2019. The museum also operates a heritage railroad on the museum grounds. Background The collection focuses on Southern California's railroad history. It houses the largest collection of Pacific Electric Railway rolling stock in the world, much of it rescued from scrapyards after the discontinuation of their passenger operations in 1961. Two early Los Angeles narrow gauge streetcars from the Los Angeles Railway or standard gauge streetcars from the Pacific Electric Railway run each weekend o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Perris, California
Perris is an old railway city in Riverside County, California, United States, located east-southeast of Los Angeles and north of San Diego. It is known for Lake Perris, an artificial lake, skydiving, and its sunny dry climate. Perris is within the Inland Empire metropolitan area of Southern California. Perris had a population of 78,700 as of the 2020 census. History The coming of the California Southern Railroad led to the founding of the city around the new depot, on the rail connection between the present-day cities of Barstow and San Diego. The Perris Depot is included in the Library of Congress’ Historic American Buildings Survey. Due to a land title dispute at Pinacate, most of its citizens moved two miles north on the railroad and established Perris in 1885. The city is named in honor of Fred T. Perris, chief engineer of the California Southern Railroad.The city of Perris was incorporated in 1911. It originally was within San Diego County but, in 1892, it was tr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Gondola (rail)
In US railroad terminology, a gondola is an open-topped rail vehicle used for transporting loose bulk materials. Because of their low side walls, gondolas are also suitable for the carriage of such high-density cargos as steel plates or coils, or of bulky items such as prefabricated sections of rail track. Gondolas are distinct from hopper cars in that they do not have doors on their floor to empty cargo. In Australia these wagons are called ''open wagons''. History The first gondola cars in North America were developed in the 1830s, and used primarily to carry coal. Early gondolas were little more than flatcars with wooden sides added, and were typically small – or less in length, and or less in weight. These cars were not widely used at first, as they could only be unloaded by workers shoveling out their cargo by hand, a slow and labor-intensive process. A solution for this problem was developed around the 1860s with the drop-bottom gondola, which had hatches installed ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Southern Pacific Transportation Company
The Southern Pacific (or Espee from the railroad initials- SP) was an American Class I railroad network that existed from 1865 to 1996 and operated largely in the Western United States. The system was operated by various companies under the names Southern Pacific Railroad, Southern Pacific Company and Southern Pacific Transportation Company. The original Southern Pacific began in 1865 as a land holding company. The last incarnation of the Southern Pacific, the Southern Pacific Transportation Company, was founded in 1969 and assumed control of the Southern Pacific system. The Southern Pacific Transportation Company was acquired in 1996 by the Union Pacific Corporation and merged with their Union Pacific Railroad. The Southern Pacific legacy founded hospitals in San Francisco, Tucson, and Houston. In the 1970s, it also founded a telecommunications network with a state-of-the-art microwave and fiber optic backbone. This telecommunications network became part of Sprint, a compa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Block Signal
Railway signalling (), also called railroad signaling (), is a system used to control the movement of railway traffic. Trains move on fixed rails, making them uniquely susceptible to collision. This susceptibility is exacerbated by the enormous weight and inertia of a train, which makes it difficult to quickly stop when encountering an obstacle. In the UK, the Regulation of Railways Act 1889 introduced a series of requirements on matters such as the implementation of interlocked block signalling and other safety measures as a direct result of the Armagh rail disaster in that year. Most forms of train control involve movement authority being passed from those responsible for each section of a rail network (e.g. a signalman or stationmaster) to the train crew. The set of rules and the physical equipment used to accomplish this determine what is known as the ''method of working'' (UK), ''method of operation'' (US) or ''safeworking'' (Aus.). Not all these methods require the us ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Safetran
Safetran Systems Corporation was an American company that manufactured switch machines, railroad wayside signal systems, rail transit signaling and rail-highway level crossing active warning systems. The company was a major supplier of freight/commuter rail and transit signal systems with projects on CSX, Norfolk Southern, Union Pacific, BNSF, Canadian National Railway, Amtrak, MBTA, Metra, Metrolink, Metropolitan Transit, New Jersey Transit, New York City Transit, SEPTA, Metropolitan Transportation Authority and others. History Safetran was founded in 1920Safetran history on Invelsys Rail Group website (archived, 8 Oct 2011) when Safetran's predecessors started developing and fielding products for the growing railroad infrastructure (See [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Magnetic Flagman
Wigwag is a nickname for a type of railroad grade crossing signal once common in North America, referring to its pendulum-like motion that signaled the approach of a train. The device is generally credited to Albert Hunt, a mechanical engineer at Southern California's Pacific Electric (PE) interurban streetcar railroad, who invented it in 1909 for safer railroad grade crossings. The term should not be confused with its usage in Britain, where "wigwag" generally refers to alternate flashing lights, such as those found at modern level crossings. Rationale Soon after the advent of the automobile, travel speeds were increasing and the popularity of enclosed cars made the concept of "stop, look, and listen" at railroad crossings difficult. Fatalities at crossings were increasing. Though the idea of automatic grade crossing protection was not new, no one had invented a fail-safe, universally recognized system. In those days, many crossings were protected by a watchman who warned of an ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Steam Locomotive
A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, oil or, rarely, wood) to heat water in the locomotive's boiler to the point where it becomes gaseous and its volume increases 1,700 times. Functionally, it is a steam engine on wheels. In most locomotives, the steam is admitted alternately to each end of its cylinders, in which pistons are mechanically connected to the locomotive's main wheels. Fuel and water supplies are usually carried with the locomotive, either on the locomotive itself or in a tender coupled to it. Variations in this general design include electrically-powered boilers, turbines in place of pistons, and using steam generated externally. Steam locomotives were first developed in the United Kingdom during the early 19th century and used for railway transport until the middle of the 20th century. Richard Trevithick ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Interurban Streetcar
The Interurban (or radial railway in Europe and Canada) is a type of electric railway, with streetcar-like electric self-propelled rail cars which run within and between cities or towns. They were very prevalent in North America between 1900 and 1925 and were used primarily for passenger travel between cities and their surrounding suburban and rural communities. The concept spread to countries such as Japan, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy and Poland. Interurban as a term encompassed the companies, their infrastructure, their cars that ran on the rails, and their service. In the United States, the early 1900s interurban was a valuable economic institution. Most roads between towns and many town streets were unpaved. Transportation and haulage was by horse-drawn carriages and carts. The interurban provided reliable transportation, particularly in winter weather, between the town and countryside. In 1915, of interurban railways were operating in the United States an ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Branch Line
A branch line is a phrase used in railway terminology to denote a secondary railway line which branches off a more important through route, usually a main line. A very short branch line may be called a spur line. Industrial spur An industrial spur is a type of secondary track used by railroads to allow customers at a location to load and unload railcars without interfering with other railroad operations. Industrial spurs can vary greatly in length and railcar capacity depending on the requirements of the customer the spur is serving. In heavily industrialized areas, it is not uncommon for one industrial spur to have multiple sidings to several different customers. Typically, spurs are serviced by local trains responsible for collecting small numbers of railcars and delivering them to a larger yard, where these railcars are sorted and dispatched in larger trains with other cars destined to similar locations. Because industrial spurs generally have less capacity and traffic t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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California State Route 74
State Route 74 (SR 74), part of which forms the Palms to Pines Scenic Byway or Pines to Palms Highway, and the Ortega Highway, is a state highway in the U.S. state of California. It runs from Interstate 5 in California, Interstate 5 in San Juan Capistrano, California, San Juan Capistrano in Orange County, California, Orange County to the city limits of Palm Desert, California, Palm Desert in Riverside County, California, Riverside County. Stretching about , it passes through several parks and United States National Forest, National Forests between the Pacific coast and the Coachella Valley. Route description SR 74 begins at an interchange with I-5 (CA), I-5 in the city of San Juan Capistrano, California, San Juan Capistrano and heads east as the Ortega Highway, loosely paralleling San Juan Creek. The highway leaves the San Juan Capistrano city limits and turns northeast, going through the community of Rancho Mission Viejo and entering Ronald W. Caspers Wilderness Park and eventual ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Perris Depot
The Perris Depot is a railroad depot built in 1892 to serve Perris, California. The station replaced a previous wooden structure at the same site on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway line, originally the California Southern Railroad. History The station was built by J.W. Nance, a Perris developer, and was designed by Benjamin Franklin Levet, Sr., son-in-law to Fred T. Perris. The depot served both passenger traffic and the considerable agricultural traffic associated with the farmlands of the Perris Valley. However, passenger traffic declined and ended in 1947. Agriculture declined due to limited water supplies and salinization, and farms were replaced with suburbs. All but one track in the station yard was abandoned in 1975. From 1974 the depot has been used by the Perris Valley Historical and Museum Association as a museum of local history. In the 1990s the depot was proposed as a commuter rail station. Description The red brick depot is in the Queen Anne style, with ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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BNSF Railway
BNSF Railway is one of the largest freight railroads in North America. One of seven North American Class I railroads, BNSF has 35,000 employees, of track in 28 states, and nearly 8,000 locomotives. It has three transcontinental routes that provide rail connections between the western and eastern United States. BNSF trains traveled over in 2010, more than any other North American railroad. The BNSF Railway Company is the principal operating subsidiary of parent company Burlington Northern Santa Fe, LLC. Headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, the railroad's parent company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc., of Omaha, Nebraska. The current CEO is Kathryn Farmer. According to corporate press releases, the BNSF Railway is among the top transporters of intermodal freight in North America. It also hauls bulk cargo, including enough coal to generate around 25% of the electricity produced in the United States. The creation of BNSF started with the formation of ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |