Nostalgia & History > Spencer: Depot Friday - Ludlow and Rice, CA

By the time the Blythe-Ripley excursion in the previous thread ran in 1965, there was only a station sign standing alongside the main line at Ludlow, CA and a small tin shed holding up the sign at the Ripley District junction of Rice, CA.  Two decades earlier, James N. Spencer visited both stations and found intact depot buildings. 

The exceptionally plain but functional Ludlow depot had a sign on the rear corner indicating it was also serving as a bus depot at the time.  The agency closed in 1960 and the building was torn down the following year. 

The little 14x51 depot at Rice had been moved in from Vidal, two stations to the east, not long before this photo was taken ca.1949.  The agency here closed less than a decade later in 1955.  In front of the depot is coach-baggage-caboose 2310, which was used on the mixed train to Blythe. 

Photos courtesy the Western Railway Museum Archives.

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Looks like whoever was in charge of that Rice station at the time sure ran a tight ship.

Rice was the junction point of the line to Ripley/Blythe and I guess at some point passengers changed trains there
but wow, there's just not much else out there. Kaiser had a mine to the East and maybe produced some traffic and
riders but iit's pretty quiet out there. Very few shots of that depot seem to pop up. Ludlow, up until the late thirties
had three railroads and was a metropolis compared to Rice. 

Out 

Keeping the station up was about all their was to do during this era.

Sure during WWII it was busy with the George Patton Training grounds in the area.