Much of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority’s L Line (formerly the Gold Line) was built on the old Santa Fe Railway’s Second District mainline. A pair of AnsaldoBreda P2550 light rail vehicles heads north across Pasadena’s Del Mar Boulevard and while braking for a stop at the Del Mar station. It is impossible to tell today, but the Del Mar station used to be the Santa Fe’s passenger station, a stop utilized by Hollywood stars wishing to avoid the crowds of Union Station when traveling in style on the Super Chief to Chicago. And unlike those days, the MTA’s L Line now drops into a tunnel just past this station to pass under downtown Pasadena and to gain access to the center of Interstate 210 for about six-miles. (Following a realignment in the late 1960s, the Santa Fe’s Second District was relocated to the center of the new I-210 as well, and it was fun to watch your train overtake the freeway traffic from one of the railway’s Pleasure Dome cars.) The Avalon Del Mar Station Apartments, constructed in 2006 alongside and over the old Gold Line (three years after the Gold Line opened) gives this area an attractive urban appearance. (Pasadena, California – August 9, 2020)
