Harbor Subdivision (BNSF)

The BNSF Harbor Subdivision is a historic single-track main line of the BNSF Railway which stretches 26 miles/42km between the rail yards of downtown Los Angeles and the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach across southwestern Los Angeles County. It was the primary link between two of the world's busiest harbors and the transcontinental rail network. Mostly displaced with the April 15, 2002 opening of the more direct Alameda Corridor, the "Harbor Sub" takes a far more circuitous route from origin to destination, owing to its growth in segments over the decades. The subdivision was built in this fashion beginning in the early 1880s to serve the ports and the various businesses that developed along it.

History

Construction

First built to serve Port Ballona, located at what is now Playa del Rey, the construction of a larger, better port at Redondo Beach brought an extension to that city in 1888. The early 1900s would see that project eclipsed with the coming of the San Pedro Outer Breakwater and the Port of Los Angeles. By the early 1920s, owing to the development of the area's oil fields, the Harbor Sub was extended through Torrance, Wilmington and on to Long Beach. Development of Watson Yard in Wilmington completed the line. Other than sidings at "Lairport" (along the eastern edge of Los Angeles International Airport next to Aviation Boulevard), "Ironsides" in Torrance and the line's longest siding at the Alcoa plant, also in Torrance, the Harbor Sub is completely single-track without signals, compensated with track warrant control via a local dispatcher. Early operations on the line meant one or more daily freight trains and, prior to the Second World War, an occasional passenger train. From the 1950s to the early 1990s, this line saw one or two through trains each way daily. A number of locals worked the line including the Wilmington Turn out of Hobart Yard in Vernon and the Hobart Turn out of the aforementioned Watson Yard. Other locals were assigned to Watson Yard and Vernon's Malabar Yard. Though operations on the Hobart Turn ceased in the early 1980s, the Watson (near Wilmington) and Malabar switch jobs remained to serve industries along the route. The Malabar Yard area is the site of one of the few Magnetic Flagman grade crossing signals remaining in active use. The lone signal guards a crossing with nine separate tracks on 49th Street.

pur lines

One of the line's major spurs was the so-called Torrance Oil Spur. This north/south spur line connected a Union Oil tank farm on the Torrance/Lomita border to the Harbor Subdivision. A secondary east/west spur served a United States Navy storage annex a short distance east of the main spur, today the site of a municipal park named Wilson Park.

It originally began a short distance from Zamperini Field (then known as Torrance Municipal Airport), crossed Lomita Boulevard into the tank farm and continued northward through a residential area, emerging at last onto the intersection of Sepulveda Boulevard and Madrona Avenue. The line crossed Sepulveda and paralleled Madrona along its southbound lanes, branching across Madrona south of Jefferson Street, through the Madrona Marsh nature preserve and across both Maple Avenue and Crenshaw Boulevard to serve the naval annex and to connect yet again with the Harbor Sub. The main spur crossed Madrona at a diagonal a short distance north of Torrance Boulevard and continued again along Madrona's northbound lanes. The line left Madrona at what was then its endpoint at Del Amo Boulevard where it met with the Harbor Sub near the southwestern corner of the Mobil refinery. Grade crossing signals on the line were standard highway flashers except for the Lomita Boulevard crossing and where the naval annex subspur crossed Madrona Avenue and Maple Avenue, which were protected only by crossbucks.

pur abandonments

The Torrance Oil Spur had been largely abandoned by the mid-1960s; the 1964 edition of the Thomas Brothers "Los Angeles County Popular Street Atlas" shows the southern terminus of the line at the tank farm off 225th Street while the naval annex sub-spur is not shown at all. The tracks and signals were removed by 1974, although most of the right-of-way remained intact until the widening of Madrona Avenue and its extension up and over the Harbor Sub to connect with Prairie Avenue in the early 1980s. The length of right-of-way directly adjacent to Del Amo Fashion Center served as holiday employee parking after the tracks were removed.

It was during this time that the annex sub-spur got a new, albeit temporary, lease on life. A new spur was built from the Harbor Sub to the American Racing manufacturing plant along the old naval annex ROW and part of the Madrona Marsh ROW. The spur was removed by the middle of the decade. Except for a short stretch of the residential ROW south of Sepulveda (and one lone rail in the weeds), the now-overgrown ROW south of present-day Wilson Park on the site of the naval annex and some track and a switch stand from the 1980s extension in the Monterey Business Park near American Racing, no other readily discernible evidence of the line remains.

Another rarely used but presently intact subspur in Torrance connects to the main just west of the end of Del Amo Boulevard, parallels Del Amo on its way across Crenshaw and continues east to serve heavy industries with ExxonMobil products on Del Amo Boulevard and Western Avenue. Only short locals run this line and is so little used that the crossing is exempted from requirements that school buses and hazardous material trucks stop before crossing. Still another Torrance subspur, since removed, serviced light industries along Maple Avenue.

Potential future uses

Rumors of the abandonment of the Harbor Subdivision abounded during the construction of the Alameda Corridor. BNSF has stated that, although the entire line is now within so-called yard limits and a segment between mileposts 8 in Inglewood and 14 in El Segundo "mothballed," the line will remain open to service businesses on the route and as an alternate route should the Alameda Corridor suffer an accident or derailment. Local freights continue to work the line on either side of the closed area. Major customers include a ChevronTexaco refinery in El Segundo, an Interstate Bakeries Corporation bakery in Inglewood, an ExxonMobil refinery in Torrance and the aforementioned Alcoa processing plant. Since the line is somewhat unusual insofar as it passes through residential as well as commercial districts, especially through Torrance and Redondo Beach, it is a popular destination for railfans and photographers despite reduced traffic. Radio dispatch via track warrant control makes it easy for railfans with portable scanners to follow train movement.

The line is currently under control of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority and is used by both the BNSF and the Union Pacific. Despite the closure of the Inglewood/El Segundo segment and the reduction in the number of trains from roughly 20 one-way trains per day to about six two-way trains, growth in local freight traffic is projected to be roughly two percent per year. A study conducted by the MTA examined the feasibilities of extending the Green Line to Torrance via the Harbor Sub, the creation of a new light rail transit line and even the possibility of a maglev high-speed rail system. The study also examines the possibilities abandonment would create, although the scenarios remain highly unlikely.

References

* [http://members.trainorders.com/cimascrambler/harbor_sub_gallery/ History and photo gallery dedicated to the Harbor Subdivision]
* [http://thetransitcoalition.us/TTC_MTA-HarborSubdivisionIndex.htm MTA Harbor Subdivision home page with a link to the .pdf format future use study]