L.A. on the Nile

[Image: From the Los Angeles Times photographic archive at UCLA Library; copyright Regents of the University of California, UCLA Library].

The above image, originally published by the L.A. Times in 1965 and now in a collection at UCLA, shows "electric streetcars that once carried passengers on Los Angeles streets" being loaded by crane onto "the Liberian ship Santa Helena at Long Beach Harbor." The boat soon thereafter set sail for Cairo, Egypt, as the streetcars had been purchased by that city's own Transportation Co. "The streetcars will be used," the caption adds, "in Alexandria, Egypt." So, like something out of a story by Ignacio Padilla, if you want to experience a lost chapter in Los Angeles public transportation history, perhaps you need to book a flight to Cairo and head north toward the Mediterranean Sea.