This past weekend, the Metro Transportation Library & Archive logged its 2,000,000th view of its online Flickr photo collection.

Since launching less than four years ago, the Library has become a national leader in the early adoption of social media, including resource sharing such as Flickr.

The collection now numbers more than 8,000 and spans all of Metro’s predecessor agencies dating back to the 1870s.

This post explains the value of providing digital access to our transportation legacy and highlights some of the more recent additions to the collection, many of which have never been seen before.

They include early 20th century views of the Mount Lowe Railway, renderings from early Metro Rail planning (anyone for overhead rail lines through Hollywood?), Los Angeles’ 1970’s exploration of People Mover personal rapid transit, opening day for the Cahuenga Pass Freeway in 1940, and much more.

The entire story and links to the images can be found at the Library’s Primary Resources blog.