Hawthorne–El Nido was a line of the

Pacific Electric Railway The Pacific Electric Railway Company, nicknamed the Red Cars, was a privately owned mass transit system in Southern California consisting of electrically powered streetcars, interurban cars, and buses and was the largest electric railway system ...

. It initially hosted local services between

Hawthorne Hawthorne often refers to the American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne may also refer to: Places Australia *Hawthorne, Queensland, a suburb of Brisbane Canada * Hawthorne Village, Ontario, a suburb of Milton, Ontario United States * Hawt ...

and El Nido, though services were eventually routed through to

Downtown Los Angeles Downtown Los Angeles (DTLA) contains the central business district of Los Angeles. In addition, it contains a diverse residential area of some 85,000 people, and covers . A 2013 study found that the district is home to over 500,000 jobs. It is ...

and as far south as Clifton and Redondo Beach.

History

The route was constructed by

Los Angeles and Redondo Railway LOS, or Los, or LoS may refer to: Science and technology * Length of stay, the duration of a single episode of hospitalisation * Level of service, a measure used by traffic engineers * Level of significance, a measure of statistical significance ...

in 1902. Service was operating between Los Angeles and Redondo Beach by September 22. That line was split up after the Great Merger of 1911, with the segment between Hawthorne and El Nido going to the Pacific Electric and the tracks north of Hawthorne becoming the

Los Angeles Railway The Los Angeles Railway (also known as Yellow Cars, LARy and later Los Angeles Transit Lines) was a system of streetcars that operated in Central Los Angeles and surrounding neighborhoods between 1895 and 1963. The system provided frequent loc ...

E Line. The PE segment was converted to

standard gauge A standard-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge of . The standard gauge is also called Stephenson gauge (after George Stephenson), International gauge, UIC gauge, uniform gauge, normal gauge and European gauge in Europe, and SGR in Ea ...

the following year. Between 1914 and 1916, some trips were through-routed to El Segundo on the north end. As that ended, the line began to see service through to the

Pacific Electric Building The historic Pacific Electric Building (also known as the Huntington Building, after the railway’s founder, Henry Huntington, or simply “6th & Main”), opened in 1905 in the core of Los Angeles as the main train station for the Pacific Elec ...

via Watts and Delta interspersed with a complicated schedule of other routings. At that time, select trips made the full run from Los Angeles to Clifton over the Hawthorne–El Nido segment with most trips being

short turn In public transport, a short turn, short working or turn-back is an earlier terminus on a bus or rail line that is used on some scheduled trips that do not operate along the full length of the route. Short turns are practical in scheduling when t ...

s at South Los Angeles. By 1931, all trips were running the length from Los Angeles to Redondo or El Nido. Service ceased after October 25, 1933, and more service was directed to the

Redondo Beach via Gardena Line Redondo via Gardena was a line of the Pacific Electric Railway. One of two routes to Redondo Beach, this one was faster than the Redondo Beach via Playa del Rey Line as a result of its routing along the quadruple-tracked Watts main line. Hist ...

to serve Delta-area passengers.

References

Bibliography

* Pacific Electric routes Closed railway lines in the United States Railway services discontinued in 1933 1933 disestablishments in California {{California-transport-stub