The final scenes were shot at the Red Car trolley graveyard, on Terminal Island, near the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. They were in the process of being recycled by National Metal and Steel. The company also scrapped many decommissioned U.S. Navy ships there after WWII and also steam locomotives as they were being replaced by diesel-electric ones. The scrapyard closed at the end of 1985.
The versatile character actor Stanley Adams was just a decade away from his best remembered role as the likable but crafty Cyrano Jones in Star Trek (1966)'s The Trouble with Tribbles (1967). His character was a bit of a smuggler, too, though he likened it to being a traveling purveyor of unusual items.
The small recorder Jordan plays is a Protona Minifon P-55 made in West Germany starting in 1955. It recorded on a small reel-to-reel wire system. It was used by many intelligence services around the world, including the CIA.
When the ambulance is rushing to pick up the injured boy, it goes past the Hi Ho Motel. The motel was located on Ventura Boulevard in an area that was mostly commercial and a bit rundown. In the early 1980s, the city used its "red light abatement" law to close down the motel, and it was demolished by its owner in 1985 to make way for a shopping center.
The stacked Los Angeles streetcars waiting to be scrapped on Terminal Island were also used in The Steel Mountain (1958) of Rescue 8 (1958).