PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR Kitbashing a Pacific Electric Ry. derrick Building the interurban’s 100-ton electric derrick in HO scale/Kevin Bunker F
rom the early 1900’s through World War II and even into the 1950’s, the far-flung Pacific Elec-
tric Railway dominated the greater Los Angeles basin and surrounding hillside communities. Its lines radiated out from central Los Angeles to the Pacific shore- line towns of Long Beach, San Pedro and numerous beachside enclaves. Oth- ers probed north to the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood,
RMC/Dremel Kitbashing Award........
stock. One of these latter units was wrecking derrick No. 003.
A longtime friend who grew up in Glendale,
Pasadena and Sierra Madre. Exten- sions into the San Bernardino region and Orange County created a rail net- work carrying suburban commuter traf- fic which was bolstered with local and long-haul freights. With so much activi- ty the operation required hundreds of passenger and freight cars, express and Railway Post Office motors, steeple cab freight locomotives and a host of fasci- nating maintenance-of-way rolling
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A minimum of $100 and a Dremel Rotary Tool Kit with a variable-speed Dremel 3000 rotary tool and acces- sories are awarded to the monthly winners of the RMC/DREMEL KITBASHING AWARD. Entries must consist of at least two photos (high-resolution digital pic- tures should be at least 3,000 pixels wide; color slides or 5″×7″ or 8″×10″ prints are also acceptable) and a short text. Models must use at least 50% commercial compo- nents; unused entries may be held future editorial use.
Los Angeles during the PE’s sunset years has kept me busy over the last 20-odd years custom building or paint- ing models for him to preserve his childhood memories of this marvelous interurban railway’s equipment. Re- cently he produced a copy of P. Allen Copeland’s Pacific Electric in Color, Vol. II (Morning Sun Books, 1999), in which the wrecker was shown going to work to lift a derailed circus train car. There was just the one photo, but it was enough to get me going. Although Copeland’s book doesn’t tell
much about it, the prototype locomotive crane shows ample evidence of having been built by Bucyrus-Erie, a leading manufacturer of such machines. But unlike the wealth of Bucyrus 120-ton
OCTOBER 2012
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