Tracks to the Past : Transportation: The debut of Metrolink is a reminder of the late, great Big Red Cars that helped make the Valley what it is today.

As the new Metrolink system debuted Monday, one official proclaimed the future of commuter transportation in Southern California to be rail.

But in the San Fernando Valley, rail also is the transportation of the past.

For about 40 years, from 1911 to 1952, Pacific Electric Railway trolleys known as the Big Red Cars crisscrossed the Valley, carrying workers from their homes to Los Angeles on weekdays, teen-agers to the movies in Hollywood on Saturdays and families to the beach on weekends.

“One of the biggest mistakes they ever made was taking them out,” said Harold Rockwell, a 46-year Valley resident and member of the San Fernando Valley Historical Society.

The Red Cars came to the Valley on Dec. 16, 1911, when the first electric trolley rolled along new rail lines over Cahuenga Pass from Los Angeles to Van Nuys. A year later, Red Car service was extended to Owensmouth--now Canoga Park--and to San Fernando.

Passenger service to Glendale and Burbank from downtown began even earlier on a separate line. Red Cars began running in Glendale on April 6, 1904, and in Burbank on Sept. 6, 1911, according to the book “Ride the Big Red Cars” by Spencer Crump.

By 1915, Pacific Electric was running 16 trains a day from Van Nuys to Hill Street in downtown Los Angeles starting at 5:38 a.m. The fare was 20 cents each way. The running time between the two places was one hour.

“It was the easiest way to get downtown for years,” said Neil Langan, a longtime Valley resident and a historical society volunteer.

Langan, whose family has lived in Reseda for more than 50 years, said that he remembers taking the trolley as a child with his mother.

“It was something big and important. We’d either be going downtown or to Van Nuys to shop.”

But he also remembers “the hard seats. They were wood and had no cushions.”

Ironically, the early electric rail system from Los Angeles is a major reason the Valley grew from the city’s rural back yard into a gridlocked urban area badly in need of a public transit system such as Metrolink.

The Red Car system was built to attract home buyers to the Valley--the testimony to its success is everywhere.

Early in the 1910s, according to “The San Fernando Valley, Past and Present” by Lawrence C. Jorgensen, the Los Angeles Suburban Homes Co. bought the southern half of the San Fernando Valley, then dotted with small towns surrounded by farmland.

The developers asked the Pacific Electric Railway Corp., a subsidiary of Southern Pacific Railroad, to construct a line through the soon-to-be-plotted home sites of Van Nuys and Marian--now Reseda--to a western terminal at Owensmouth.

Southern Pacific agreed, after being paid $150,000. Soon, an all-electric rapid transit system connected Los Angeles with the farthest reaches of the Valley, a selling point for subdividers.

By 1917, most Valley residents could easily and regularly travel the Pacific Electric over Cahuenga Pass to Hollywood in 31 minutes, then ride from there to downtown.

“We used to take the Red Car to the beach,” said Ruth Benjamin, another longtime Valley resident. “It was wonderful.”

The Red Car line into the Valley ran from downtown Los Angeles over Cahuenga Pass onto Vineland Avenue to Chandler Boulevard in North Hollywood. It then went up Van Nuys Boulevard to Sherman Way, where it split into two branches. One ran west along Sherman Way to Owensmouth. The other ran to San Fernando via Van Nuys Boulevard, Parthenia Street, Sepulveda Boulevard and Brand Boulevard.

The electric trains fell victim to freeways and automobiles. Lack of ridership caused Pacific Electric to stop running the Red Cars between Van Nuys and Owensmouth in 1938.

In 1949, Pacific Electric proposed ending trolley service between Los Angeles and Van Nuys. City Councilman Edward J. Davenport protested. “The rapidly growing San Fernando Valley will suffer disruptions akin to partial isolation if rail lines are abandoned,” he said then.

But despite protests, the last Red Car rumbled over the Cahuenga Pass to Van Nuys on Dec. 28, 1952.

“It was a sad day,” cowboy performer Montie Montana said in a 1978 interview. Montana, as honorary sheriff of the Valley, joined other dignitaries in riding the last Red Car.

“They should never have taken them out,” he said. “You could ride downtown for a quarter and have no traffic.”

Aside from a brief experiment in 1982 with Caltrain, the state’s ill-fated Oxnard-to-Los Angeles commuter train, the Valley has lacked a rail commuting system since the Red Car shut down and left the area to RTD buses.

Today, little remains of the Red Car, once touted as “the world’s greatest electric railway.” Some tracks can still be seen in parts of the Valley. Where the Red Cars once ran on Sherman Way is now a median strip filled with greenery.

In June, 1990, fire destroyed the last remaining Red Car depot, the Picover Station at 16710 Sherman Way, just two years after the Los Angeles City Council declared it a historical and cultural monument.

“The automobile killed the Big Red Car,” Rockwell said. “But they were welcome transportation at the time.”