Poster of 1914 image by John Henry Mentz, part of the Treasures From the Muni Archive Display on Market Street and (in this case) at our museum on Steuart Street, very close to the spot where this image was taken.

As part of Muni’s centennial year activities, Mayor Ed Lee has unveiled a new, multi-faceted display that brings the history of Market Street, and its transit, to life. Part of it centers on our San Francisco Railway Museum.

SFMTA (Muni’s parent) has partnered with us (Market Street Railway) and with the online non-profit Historypin, to create a cool window into our storied main street’s past.

It’s all based on Muni’s photo archives, long unavailable to the public, but now coming into view, thanks to the efforts of archivist/photographer Heather Moran. Our museum features a wall of fantastic large blow-ups of shots taken by Muni photographers (and their counterpart at the old United Railroads, John Henry Mentz) over the past 110 years. Outside the museum, more great archival photos, tied to our physical location — just across from the Ferry Building and its famed streetcar loop (preceded by a colossal cable car turntable before the 1906 earthquake and fire).

But that’s just the beginning of the show. On many Muni passenger shelters along the downtown part of Market Street, you’ll find historic photographs of that very location screened onto the glass itself. Each one of these has a QR code, which, if you scan it with your app-equipped mobile phone, will take you to a spot on the Historypin site that shows you more photos of that same location over the decades. (Don’t worry; if you don’t have all that capability, you can go here to see all the photos linked to the shelters in one place.) Additionally, SFMTA has set up a supporting photo archive site here.

In announcing the exhibit, Mayor Lee said, “San Francisco is excited to launch the ‘Treasures from the Muni Archive’™ exhibit to engage the City about Muni’s rich past and begin the celebration of Muni’™s centennial. The high-tech features of this exhibit make history come alive and represent San Francisco’s commitment to innovation.”

SFMTA Director of Transportation Ed Reiskin added, “With nearly 30,000 photos in the SFMTA archive, we are pleased to have such a unique way to share them with residents and visitors. We are grateful to our long-standing partner, MSR, and one of our newest partners, Historypin, for making this exciting exhibit possible.”

MSR President Rick Laubscher hailed the multi-faceted partnership that made this possible “Our City has one of the richest transportation histories in America,” he said. “We salute Muni for the work it is doing in preserving its own precious archives and sharing them with San Franciscans and visitors alike through this project. We’re proud to help on this and other activities marking Muni’s centennial.” The shelter photos are scheduled to be up through the end of March, but we plan to keep our exhibit up all summer.

By the way, many of these images come from the great book on Muni’s first hundred years written by our members, including the late Cam Beach, the late Phil Hoffman, Bob Townley, Grant Ute, and Walt Vielbaum. You can get it at our museum, or in our online store.

Jim Lekas photo, Market Street Railway Archive

Here’s an oddity. Not the photo, but where it showed up. We love this shot for two reasons: it features preserved Muni “Iron Monster” No. 162, near the end of its original service life on the M-Ocean View line on 19th Avenue crossing Junipero Serra, and it’s got that cool Nash keeping pace right alongside.

We know this photo, because it’s part of our collection, donated to us by MSR member Jim Lekas, who took it himself. We’ve never put it on the web before, but somehow — Jim doesn’t know how and neither do we — it has appeared in the Chronicle several times now in an advertisement for their website Groupon wannabe “sfgatedailydeals.com”. An even bigger mystery than where they got the photo is why they used it, since it has nothing to do with the copy.

Maybe they just think it’s cool.

We’re fine with that!

UPDATE: Mystery solved. Thanks to eagle-eyed member Walter Gerken, we now know how the Chronicle got the photo. The great Carl Nolte did a story on the return of Car No. 162 to the active fleet in 2008. Muni had asked us for photos of the streetcar; we provided Jim’s; it was attributed in the story to Jim, but courtesy of Muni, rather than us (which is fine). Frankly, we just missed that ball. Strike one!

Still, a good excuse to share a great photo. Thanks again to Jim for sharing it.

As our members and friends know, our organization is named for Muni’s old private competitor, Market Street Railway Company. That company actually went through several manifestations, starting back in the 19th century, when it was an arm of the Southern Pacific Railroad’s all-powerful “octopus,” famously novelized by Frank Norris.

In the 1920s, following a reorganization of United Railroads, the name appeared again, this time managed by a firm named Byllesby, which owned or managed numerous utility properties of many types around the country, not just streetcar lines.

Member Bob Davis recently sent us a reminder of Byllesby’s one-time reach with this photo of the restored downtown power station of San Diego Gas & Electric, with a medallion highlighting the Byllesby slogan, “Pioneers in Public Service.” What you don’t see, because the incised letters around the edge are painted the same color as the medallion itself, is the name “Byllesby” across the top and the words “Engineering-Finance-Management” around the edge.

On the similarly shaped original Market Street Railway logo (on which our non-profit’s logo is closely modeled), “Byllesby” appears in the same location along the top, and “Pioneers in Public Service” around the edge. When transit stopped being profitable in America (between the 1930s and late 1940s in most places), management companies like Byllesby gave up this part of their portfolio as public agencies took over. (Remember, Muni was the first big-city public transit agency when it started up in 1912; there were few like it around the country until after World War II.)

Now, though, we’re starting to see private-sector management of transit systems reappear in the U.S. and elsewhere, particularly with firms like Veolia, a French firm that now has contracts to run such systems as New Orleans’ RTA.

Thanks to Bob for the photo. By the way, in a little coincidence, San Diego’s weekend “Silver Line” loop, using an ex-Muni 1100-class PCC restored as a San Diego streetcar, runs right by this site today.

PCC No. 1074, the "Red Rocket", near the end of its testing period on The Embarcadero near Mission Street, signed for the future E-line. Jeremy Whiteman photo.

For decades, people in Toronto have called their streetcars “Red Rockets.” They ran all over town (their successors still do!) Now, a PCC streetcar painted in tribute to the Red Rockets is carrying passengers on the F-line, having just gone into revenue service for the first time.

PCC No. 1074 has actually been hanging around Muni for years, acquired eight years ago from Newark as one of 11 identical cars to help reduce crowding on the overloaded F-line. Several of these 11 have been in service for extended periods since then, but several, including No. 1074, never got into regular passenger service until now.

In the 1970s, Muni ran several ex-Toronto PCCs when they needed extra equipment to handle detours while the Market Street Subway was being built. But the livery of those cars was partly altered, so No. 1074 is the first to run in full Toronto Transit Commission regalia in San Francisco. (By the way, to those who grouse that these and other Muni tribute PCCs don’t have every exact decal the original did, take a deep breath. They’re running here, not there; they have to have some standard Muni signage. We encourage that to be kept to a minimum, though, and Muni has been great about getting as many details correct as feasible.)

This is the of the 1070-class to be put into service following complete rewiring. Nos. 1071, 1078, 1079. and 1080 preceded it. The rest are either being tested now or still being worked on at the contractor, Brookville Equipment Company in Pennsylvania. The full streetcar fleet status list is here. And you can see which of these streetcars are on the F-line right now by looking at the cool map here.

Well, sorta. For the blink of an eye.

Muni’s C-Geary-California line left California Street in 1949 after having the stretch from Sixth Avenue to 33rd Avenue on its route since 1915. (Before that, the stretch was part of its private competitor’s 1-California streetcar; after 1949 it became part of Muni’s 1-California trolley bus.)

Car No. 1, still part of the Muni fleet today, in service at the end of the C-line on California near 33rd Avenue in 1944. Will Whittaker photo, Market Street Railway Archives.

Now, at least a sliver of the old streetcar tracks are back, uncovered during road repairs. Check out the story and photo in richmondsfblog.com. A similar sighting occurred a few years ago a few blocks away, with the uncovering of tracks for the 31-Balboa streetcar line.

Interesting that in the Richmond blog’s comments, one poster called for just uncovering the tracks and bringing back the streetcars. Would that it were that simple, but a nice reminder that some people still want “their” streetcar line back, 63 years later!

By the way, the restored No. 1 is getting some finishing historical touches out at Cameron Beach Yard, in preparation for a ceremony welcoming it back to the fleet as part of this, Muni’s centennial year. No date announced yet, but we’ll let you know here as soon as we know.

Our next issue of our member newsletter, Inside Track, now at the printer, features a big story on the history of Car No. 1, with several photos never published before to our knowledge. It’s for our members only, but you can get it by clicking here to join us and helping us preserve historic transit in San Francisco.

An article on BART’s new cars stirred up a hornet’s nest of comments lamenting that we don’t build anything here any more — specifically transit vehicles. We’re not going to wade into that discussion (but feel free to clink the link and comment there). Coincidentally, though, that news story appeared the same day a reader in Idaho, Noel Anthony Cimino, submitted this photograph to us for publication. Here’s what he wrote:

“This is a photo of my dad, Joseph L. Cimino, working on constructing a Market Street Railway Streetcar in the late 1920s. He’s standing to the right in the photo. It looks like he’s attaching the buzzer button that was used to announce to the carman that you wished to get off at the next stop. This photo was taken at the Elkton shops located at Ocean and San Jose Avenues.”

As some of our readers know, Muni’s old private competitor, for whom our non-profit is named, built 250 streetcars at the old Elkton Shops, using its own workforce. (For its part, Muni bought dozens of streetcars from companies who built them in San Francisco — Holman (1912-13) and Bethlehem Steel (1923).

We can’t tell which of Market Street Railway’s streetcars Mr. Cimino and his fellow craftsmen were working on. If it was the late 1920s, it wasn’t No. 798, which was built in 1924. No. 798 is the sole survivor of this “streetcar factory,” which employed many San Franciscans in good jobs for years (just as Elkton’s successor, Muni’s Curtis E. Green Light Rail Facility, does at that same location today). Both our non-profit and Muni have spent a lot of time bringing No. 798 back from the dead after it was rescued from destruction in the 1980s.

There’s still considerable electrical and mechanical work to be done on No. 798, but when it’s finished, this large, high-capacity double-ended streetcar will be one of the workhorses of the fleet — perfect for hauling crowds to and from Giants’ games, as well as carrying passengers in daily service on the E- and F-lines for decades to come. We portray No. 798’s future in our exclusive historic travel series image (available as a poster, matted print, notecard, or magnet online or at our San Francisco Railway Museum).

At the museum, you can also see a miniature streetcar of this class hand-built by the same Elkton Shops crafts workers who built the real things. Mr. Cimino may have even had a hand in that model. Surrounding the model, you can view a photo display telling the story of the old Elkton Shops and other operations of our namesake, Muni’s erstwhile privately owned competitor.

All cars built at Elkton Shops proudly wore this decal, preserved here on sole survivor No. 798: "This Car a San Francisco Product, Built in Our Own Shops. Market St. Ry. Co."

We’re all about preserving historic transit in San Francisco. We help Muni do that, but we’re not part of Muni, nor do we receive any government funding for our efforts. We count on memberships and donations. If you join our organization now, you’ll receive the new issue of our member newsletter, Inside Track, with its exclusive series on the history of America’s first public transit system — Muni — in this, its centennial year. And we’ll send you the last issue as well, with the first installment of that series. We appreciate your help in keeping vintage streetcars and cable cars as a vibrant part of the San Francisco scene.

Years ago, on Sundays and holidays, one could buy an all day, unlimited use ticket for 50 cents, which was twice the base fare. I did this whenever possible, and spent most of the time on the cable cars and streetcars. While the layout and the wording of the ticket suggest that it was created during an earlier era, I bought this ticket on March 31, 1974.

FINALLY some much needed rain today, and to greet it, the latest 1070-class streetcar to go into service following rewiring, with a little bonus.

PCC No. 1078 at the F-line Wharf terminal on its first day back carrying passengers, January 19, 2012. Click to enlarge.

PCC No. 1078 honors San Diego, whose original PCCs carried a special slogan above the windows: “Ride & Relax.” Their original PCCs did not have those little oval windows, called “standee windows” above the main windows, so on Muni’s tribute livery, the slogan was put on the lower panel of the door side instead, while other minor changes in the lettering were made to avoid confusion between historic San Diego transit routes and current Muni ones.

But when San DIego restored a PCC (ex-Muni, by the way) to run on their downtown San Diego Trolley loop with their modern LRVs last year, they found a way to fit the motto between the main windows and the standee windows. So, we did too, on the non-door side at least. Thanks to a contribution from one of our members and graphic work by our Dave Dugan, we created a decal design that closely resembles the original lettering. It was installed by the crew of Muni’s Carole Gilbert, just in time for No. 1078’s return to revenue service. Thanks to everyone involved, including Liz WIlmes, whose company has done a great job of making decals for cable cars and streetcars alike.

This is the fourth of the 11 cars in the 1070-class to return to service after rewiring. The fifth, Toronto No. 1074, should be joining them within a few days.