The Metro Rail Gold Line cuts across this intersection on a diagonal at Mission Road and Meridian Streets in South Pasadena. The shot was taken from the 2nd floor of Buster's Coffee House which lies at the hip, cultural center of this historic little bedroom community. It may look like I'm right on the edge of the tracks but I was standing on a small metal deck above a patio about 20 feet from the tracks. It's the top landing of a 2nd floor exit stairway on an old brick building. The Gold Line has only been in operation for about 3 or 4 years but the right-of-way was here before these old brick buildings. Southern Pacific freight tracks were purchased and reconfigured for the light rail line. The old building behind me was built with a sharp corner and a diagonal wall to fit along the tracks. Friends of ours live next door in an old brick building. In what is becoming a common LA event, they have their ad-art studio in an office on the ground floor and their apartment on the second floor above. The right-of-way and tracks cut across their back patio on a diagonal too.
In Los Angeles, California, anything more than 80 years old is historic and Huel Hauser might call it "California Gold". These unreinforced brick buildings pre-date the Long Beach Earthquake of 1933.
The Metro Rail Gold Line runs from the east side of Pasadena to the old Union Station in downtown Los Angeles. There it connects with several train routes: The underground, heavy-rail Red Line runs west out Whilshire Blvd towards Santa Monica and into the San Fernando Valley near Universal Studios. The daily commuter line trains, the Metro Link leaves for points all over LA and Orange Counties and Amtrak trains extend out all over the US. Mission Road extends about one or two miles east to the San Gabriel Mission. Meridian runs from a hill above the oldest freeway in the US, the Arroyo Seco Parkway and goes on down a canyon to as far away as Alhambra, near Cal State Los Angeles (CSULA, not UCLA). So the Gold Line connects with many other transit lines. Here in LA we're slowing rebuilding the great mass-transit rail system we had here in the 1920's and 30's.
