Muni’s latest addition to its PCC fleet was on the back of a flatbed somewhere near Reno when I got this email from a member: “Hi, Rick, how did they miss the green color on the PCC No. 1080? It’s obviously off—and the yellow may be a couple of degrees off also. For what Muni paid, why can’t the colors be dead right on?”

He hadn’t seen the car itself, of course, only a digital picture sent to him from another railfan. In subsequent correspondence, he said that he had seen cars in this livery in Los Angeles (almost a half century ago), and by his memory, No. 1080’s livery was “obviously off.” To answer his question, some of the liveries are indeed half a shade off, because the shades of paint Muni chooses, with advice from Market Street Railway, must serve more than one historic paint scheme to make maintaining them affordable.

But there’s a larger question hidden there. What is ‘dead right on’ when it comes to historic streetcars? In an age when most heritage streetcar startups are using replica vehicles, does Muni deserve extra credit for sticking strictly with original equipment? Does painting a Brussels tram to resemble a Zürich tram of similar body style ruin it? (story.) For that matter, does painting refurbished PCCs in the liveries of cities that actually ran this historic car type—but not that exact car—constitute unacceptable cheating?

What’s the real deal, and what’s fake?

‘We are the prototype’
A memorable moment of the first Trolley Festival came on one of the ‘midnight runs’ favored by then-Muni general manager Harold Geissenheimer. An avid railfan, Geissenheimer would order ‘tests’ of vintage equipment on various parts of the streetcar system after the Festival had shut down for the day. On a warm 1983 evening, I remember a railfan badgering Geissenheimer about some detail—paint or the like—that didn’t match his recollection of the original. Geissenheimer finally looked at him and exclaimed, “We are the prototype. If we do it, it is by definition correct.” That ended the conversation.

Geissenheimer had a point. In past years, no one complained when Muni rolled out an ‘experimental’ paint scheme for a bus or streetcar. Whether fans liked or disliked it, they didn’t question the agency’s right to do it. (In fact, many of these oddball paint schemes are still avidly discussed by some railfans, decades after they made their brief appearances on the streets.) Yet when PCC No. 1080 appeared in San Francisco (story) arguments started up on railfan Internet groups about whether the front end should have had a little point of green paint leading down to the headlight (turns out that a few cars from Los Angeles Transit Lines got this treatment, but most didn’t).

The overwhelming sentiment, however, expressed consistently since the F-line opened in 1995, is that the PCC liveries honoring cities that operated these cars around North America really liven up the line, much more so than a standardized Muni livery would. (Embarrassing disclosure: when this decision was made by Muni, I personally opposed it, believing that all the cars should have a consistent [Muni] livery. Once I saw the cars, I knew I was dead wrong.)

In fact, when Muni originally painted one of its double-end PCC restorations, No. 1007, in the same livery as the then-new Breda cars, there was widespread criticism that the scheme didn’t fit with the historic liveries. And when car No. 737 arrived from Brussels, the paint scheme it bore, with off-kilter squares of blue on a yellow background, was widely disliked among Muni people as being ‘too modern’ for the F-line. (Muni lacked the money to repaint the car, but the problem was addressed, at least temporarily, when Zürich interests put up the money to paint it in classic Zürich blue and white as a tribute to its sister city relationship with San Francisco).

One constant: no replicas
But underneath the paint, all the streetcars currently running in San Francisco, or slated for restoration, have one thing in common: they are original equipment. Original trucks and running gear, original bodies; sometimes swapped between cars, or modernized in one way or another, and always required to meet disabled access and modern safety requirements, but original nonetheless.

In some cases, like the first batch of restored F-line PCCs, F-line cars were restored to like-new condition, cosmetically as well as mechanically. And while they have been run mercilessly to handle the crowds, these cars still by and large look great. Compare color photos of these cars more than ten years into their service life with PCCs of virtually any North American operator at a similar point in their lifecycle and you’ll see that San Francisco’s look better. Indeed, the cosmetic restoration standard was set so high that the delivery of No. 1080 set off surprised disappointment that the interior wasn’t completely redone, even though all involved knew it wasn’t in the scope for budget reasons. And, in fact, the interior of those ex-Newark cars is arguably in better condition than Muni’s own fleet of PCCs back in the 1970s.

On the other hand, some of the older equipment is definitely showing its age, but riders seem to appreciate it for its genuine antiquity, even when it’s not slavishly accurate to history. When Mayor Newsom rode 1914 Muni car No. 130 up Market Street with his fellow mayors from around the world on June 4, as part of the UN World Environment Day 2005 celebration, he remarked repeatedly at the craftsmanship of the wooden ceiling and seats. He didn’t know—and probably wouldn’t care—that the 1940s blue and gold paint scheme of the car is historically at odds with the stripped and varnished ceiling (which would have been painted in that era). On board car No. 1 following, a Muni official was explaining to a rider the need to restore the tired-looking flagship of Muni’s vintage fleet. “Why?” asked the rider. “This is real. I can see and feel the history.”

‘Because it can’
A big part of the reason Muni runs original equipment is because it can. Its pioneering role in the American streetcar preservation movement in the 1980s gave it a head start in acquiring equipment that had only recently been retired, such as streetcars from Melbourne and Porto, Portugal that Muni still owns. Market Street Railway and its charter members, such as the late Maurice Klebolt, moved early to bring in other vintage equipment that was then available, like Maury’s Hamburg tram, a Blackpool, England ‘Boat Tram’, and trams from Moscow, Hiroshima, and Osaka. At the time of acquisition, its owners would have scrapped most of these cars if they hadn’t gone to San Francisco. Today, such transit agency sources of old equipment have dried up, with Muni’s recently acquired 1952 Brussels/‘Zurich’ tram now the exception, not the rule.

‘Vintage’ vs. ‘heritage’
‘Vintage’ rail systems starting up today are more correctly called ‘heritage’ systems, because almost all rely heavily or exclusively on newly-manufactured streetcars that replicate the look (but often not the operating systems) of old equipment. We at Market Street Railway are occasionally asked whether San Francisco would be better off just using a standardized replica streetcar, such as New Orleans recently inaugurated on Canal Street, or like those used in Tampa and Little Rock. The answer is that those cities really didn’t have a choice. We did.

And newer isn’t always better. Some new heritage systems are reporting reliability problems with their equipment, which is much less intensively used than the F-line workhorse PCCs and Milan trams. On the other hand, replica cars can be designed to look very much like the original cars from a particular city, making it possible to bring back at least a visual evocation of the city’s past, even though the originals are long gone. Even in San Francisco, there are occasional calls from MSR members and others to have the Muni carpentry shop replicate an old Market Street Railway Co. ‘100’ class car, of which there are no survivors (certainly within the ability of that talented group), or try to fabricate an old E-line ‘Dinky’ (a much harder task, given its oddball Radiax truck).

We can also afford to be picky, and in some ways are forced to be. We have on hand enough unrestored PCCs and mothballed historic cars (see complete list) to cover all currently contemplated service expansions and extensions, including the E-line as far west as the Presidio, and as far south as Pier 70. Most remaining PCCs available on the market today are in advanced stages of rust, and would probably need to be reconstructed from the trucks up, virtual replicas of themselves. Beyond that, California Public Utilities Commission regulations require streetcars built after 1955 to meet more stringent structural standards than older cars. All Muni’s existing fleet predates 1955. Future acquisitions of newer equipment could be significantly impeded by that CPUC requirement.

Where they run
Beyond how vintage or heritage streetcars look is the question of where they run. The first phase of the F-line maintained the tradition, started in 1860, of operating rail transit in mixed traffic on Market Street. While the next phase, along The Embarcadero, uses private right-of-way in the median, this too follows traditional practice in San Francisco, observed for decades by Muni on Junipero Serra Boulevard and 19th Avenue, in the past by Market Street Railway Co. on Sloat Boulevard, and more recently by Muni on San Jose Avenue. On the other hand, some recent heritage lines use side-of-the-road right-of-way running, never a dominant practice for streetcar lines; still others use reclaimed freight railroad rights-of-way completely divorced from streets. Again, one can find historic precedent for this in a few places, but the dominant form of streetcar operation in America was in mixed traffic, on city streets, which after all is how the vehicles got their name.

In honoring the long-standing tradition of streetcar operation on its main street, San Francisco is currently joined by only one other major city—New Orleans, which recently restored streetcar service to its main street, Canal, after an absence of 40 years. On Canal, the streetcars—replicas of the city’s venerable ‘Perley Thomas’ cars that still serve the St. Charles line—run in their traditional spot in the median, which in New Orleans is called ‘neutral ground’.

So there is no pure answer. Market Street Railway advocates as much accuracy in restoration as possible, but recognizes the requirement for modern safety features and strongly supports disabled access to all vintage streetcars. We recognize San Francisco’s dominant tradition of running streetcars in mixed traffic, but recognize that, in this auto-clogged city, separate rights-of-way are increasingly necessary to provide timely service. This means compromises, made in the spirit of evolution. Recently, for instance, there have been complaints that one Muni operating crew in particular refused to deploy the heavy Eclipse fender unique to car No. 1 among the current fleet. A Market Street Railway member pointed out, though, that had car No. 1 not been originally retired from service in 1951, it, like the surviving Muni ‘Boxcars’, would have had that Eclipse replaced by a lifeguard underneath. Car No. 130, for example, has this lifeguard fender instead of an Eclipse, even though it’s painted in 1940s blue and gold, when Eclipse fenders were mandatory.

Perfect? No. But about as real as it gets these days.

Future articles in this series will review vintage and heritage streetcar systems around the world. Comments on this topic for publication in future issues of Inside Track are welcome: feedback@streetcar.org.