Transit Maps: Southern Pacific

All posts tagged: Southern Pacific

Historical Map: Peninsular Electric Railway, California, c. 1908

August 3, 2022

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Historical Maps

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1908, birds eye view, California, Cupertino, illustration, Los Gatos, Peninsular Railway, San Jose, Santa Clara Valley, Southern Pacific, USA

An attractive bird’s-eye panoramic map of the lines of the Peninsular Railway (1900–1934), affectionately known as “the Pin” by locals. The railway was founded as a subsidiary of the Southern Pacific Railroad to provide connecting electric interurban service through the Santa Clara Valley from San Jose. The map itself is a fairly typical example of the genre, though the curved labels for locality names along the lines are an unusual and effective device for enclosing […]

New Project/Work-in-Progress – Historical Map: Streetcar Lines of Portland, Oregon, 1920

July 23, 2016

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Historical Maps, My Transit Maps

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1920, Cameron Booth, commuter rail, Kenton Traction Company, Oregon, Oregon Electric, passenger rail, Portland, Portland Railway Light & Power Company, PRL&P, Southern Pacific, streetcar, United Railway, USA, work in progress

Despite Portland once having one of the largest streetcar networks in the United States, finding reliable, empirical information about it is surprisingly difficult. Books about the history of the streetcar – like Richard Thompson’s series of books or John Labbe’s Fares Please! – tend to be more photographs and captions than exhaustive detail, internet sources are incomplete and at times contradictory, and even contemporaneous sources are frustratingly incorrect. A much-referenced Pittmon map of streetcar lines […]

Historical Map: Southern Pacific “Red Electric” Tracks in Downtown Portland, c. 1920

February 14, 2014

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Historical Maps

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1920, interurban, Oregon, Oregon Electric, passenger rail, Portland, Red Electrics, Southern Pacific, streetcar, USA

Scanned from the book “The Red Electrics: Southern Pacific’s Oregon Interurbans” by Tom Dill and Walter Grande. This handsome map shows the routing of the Southern Pacific’s electric interurban trains through downtown Portland from their northern terminus at Union Station. These trains, popularly known as the “Red Electrics” after their distinctive carriages, ran from Portland all the way down the Willamette Valley as far as Corvallis, 85 miles distant. Service started in 1914, extended to […]