Remembering the Descanso, L.A.'s Funeral Streetcar

Today the Eastsider L.A. takes us back on the tracks of local history and shares a bit of the story behind The Descanso, "a 101-year-old Los Angeles street car built to transport mourners as well as the deceased to burial services." Now residing at the Orange Empire Railway Museum, "it is the only remaining funeral streetcar still on its own trucks known to exist in the U.S." notes the Pacific Railroad Society. From 1909 to 1940 the streetcar could be chartered; "Los Angeles Railway provided this service to Inglewood Park, Rosedale, and Evergreen Cemeteries and to those on Whittier Blvd. in East Los Angeles." The Eastsider L.A. has a photo of the Descanso as it looks today--check it out.