All's Fair Betting at the Racetrack

 

It's fair day in LA County, and hundreds of fairgoers
meet on two special trains at Ganesha Junction in Pomona.
Cars 1245 and 1240 are stalwart workers of the Northern Division.
(L.T. Gotchy, Jack Finn)

One notable feature about the Northern Division was its huge draw for special trains, as it served both the Santa Anita Racetrack in Pasadena and the LA County Fairgrounds in Pomona. The "racetrack" specials were among some of the most prestigious and heavily-ridden limited services on the Pacific Electric, rivalled only by the ferry trains to San Pedro and Wilmington. PE even included a special excursion fare of 55 cents round trip, rain or shine, with three- or four-car trains leaving 6th and Main every hour with peak services at every half-hour. The PE also ran special "Rose Parade Specials" on New Year's Day to take people to and from the legendary float parade, with rail traffic at Sierra Vista and Oneonta Park Junctions often being backed up from the sheer amount of cars.

PE Interurban Cars No. 1373 and 1375 gather at Santa Anita
Racetrack in 1942 to process the internment of thousands of otherwise
innocent and fully-assimilated Japanese American citizens in the wake
of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
(United States National Archive)

However, all of the special trains had a dark side as well. In cooperating with the War Transportation Board and the State State Railroad Commission, Pacific Electric trains took innocent Japanese and Japanese-American citizens from their homes around Los Angeles and brought them to Santa Anita Racetrack for "assembly" under the 1942 Forced Internment Program. Other Pacific Electric cars brought other Japanese citizens to the LA County Fairgrounds in Pomona, where another assembly center was located that housed 5,434 Japanese-Americans. Notably, one famous resident of the Pomona Assembly Center was future actor and Metro board of directors member George Takei, who helped create the new Hollywood Subway in 1978. (More on that later, too.)