For the first time in more than a half-century, a cable car lettered for the O’Farrell, Jones & Hyde line has gripped the cable under San Francisco’s streets. Cable car No. 42, lovingly restored by MSR volunteers and Muni craftspeople, officially returned to service on June 3 with Mayor Gavin Newsom on the running board.

Today, they are one of two National Historic Landmarks that move (New Orleans’ St. Charles streetcar line is the other), and both their continued operation and minimum level of service are locked into San Francisco’s City Charter.

Their history is a fascinating amalgam of technology, politics, and passion. Here, we concentrate on the basics of the current system.

The cars
Today, there are two types of cable cars in regular service. Though they differ in appearance, their operation is almost identical (see 'How they work' below).

The California Street cable car line uses twelve larger, maroon cable cars which have an open seating section at each end and a closed section in the middle. These cars can be operated from either end, and turn around by means of a simple switch at the end of the line.

The two Powell Street lines (see 'The Powell Lines' below) use smaller cable cars, operable from only one end. They thus require turntables to reverse direction at the ends of the line. There are 28 Powell cars kept on the roster at any given time. Several sport historic liveries recapturing the look of the cars at various points in the twelve-decade history of the service.

Additionally, there are unique cable cars from now-vanished lines which Market Street Railway and the Cable Car Museum are working to return to service in the future.

Huge winding wheels in the central powerhouse pull the cables around the entire system at a constant speed of 9.5 miler per hour. Cable cars basically latch onto the cable to propel themselves along their routes.

How they work
There is no engine or motor on a cable car (except those fake ones that run around on rubber tires, on which no real San Franciscan would be caught dead or alive). The power source is centralized in the cable car barn and powerhouse at Washington and Mason Streets (also home to the Cable Car Museum). There, powerful electric motors (originally a stationary steam-powered engine), drive giant winding wheels that pull cables through a trench beneath the street, centered under the cable car tracks (that’s what’s in that slot between the tracks).

There are actually four cables, one for the California line, one for Powell Street, and one each for the outer ends of the two Powell lines (Mason and Hyde). The cables are over an inch in diameter, with six steel strands of 19 wires each wrapped around a core of sisal rope.

Each cable car has a mechanical grip (two on the double-end California cars) which latches onto the cable, much like a huge pair of pliers. The gripman (or gripwoman—one woman in history has served in that position; we’ll use ‘gripman’ to represent all, uh, grippers) can 'take' or 'drop' the 'rope' (as the cable is called) as needed to start or stop the car. The cables move at a constant 9.5 miles per hour. If a cable car is going faster than that, it’s a sure thing that the car is going downhill and the grip is not holding the rope tightly.

Cable cars have three kinds of brakes, all very simple: wheel brakes, track brakes, and an emergency brake. Each wheel has a soft steel shoe that can be pulled tight against the wheel to stop the car. These are crew-activated by foot pedals on both ends of the California cars, and on the front end of the Powell cars. A conductor’s lever on the rear platform activates rear track brakes on Powell cars.

Track brakes are simply pieces of wood located between the wheel sets on the cars. There are four for each car, two feet long each, made of soft Monterey Fir. When the gripman pulls back on the track-brake lever (next to the cable grip lever), the blocks press against the tracks to help stop the car.

The emergency brake is just that. If a cable car gets into a situation where the other brakes won’t stop the car (a very rare situation), the gripman pulls back on the red emergency brake lever. This forces an 18-inch steel wedge into the steel slot between the tracks, stopping the car immediately. (The force is so great that sometimes welders have to cut the wedge out of the slot.)

Where they go
For a half-century now, there have been three cable car lines. Our map shows you where the lines are and how they intersect with the F-line historic streetcars and the Muni Metro and BART subway under Market Street. Click on the following links for route descriptions of the Powell Street cable car lines and the California Street cable car line.