In 1993, drivers on US 101 throughout central California were treated to an startling sight: a San Francisco cable car, headed home. Car No. 42 was one of 35 cable cars from the old California Street Cable Railroad, disposed of in the 1950s after Muni took it over and San Francisco voters narrowly approved a ‘consolidation’ of cable car activities at a single powerhouse and carbarn. (This actually reduced overall cable car mileage by one-half.)

The buyer of car No. 42 was a cattle rancher from the hamlet of Betteravia, H. Stanley Brown, and he loved that cable car, storing it in a covered shed and building a stretch of track for it so that it could be used to show prospective buyers his cattle. (Ingeniously, he fitted the car with a pair of Birney narrow-gauge streetcar trucks from Los Angeles Railways, and motorized them.) After Mr. Brown died in 1988, his widow offered the car back to San Francisco.

The Market Street Railway board of directors volunteered to act as Muni’s agent for the transaction. After being trucked to its Mint Division (now Pharr Division) restoration facility, project coordinator Mike Frew assessed the car, which was built in 1906 or 1907 by W. L. Holman Co. of San Francisco (which also built Muni historic streetcar No. 1) as part of the replacement fleet for cars destroyed in the great Earthquake and Fire.

Frew was surprised to find that the roof was made with slats instead of the tongue and groove material now used. Another surprise was finding large pieces of sheet metal covering the holes for the original kerosene lanterns. These large holes had considerably weakened the roof. The roof was strengthened before the canvas was applied and painted.

The sheet metal covering each end was removed soon after arrival. One end still had its original tongue and groove construction with the gold leafing and original lettering intact. New tongue and groove, cut exactly as the originals but made from long-lasting white cedar, was used to close both ends. Both end sills (bumpers) required replacement. Both ends had had fires in the sills possibly started by the carbide lights originally used in these cars. Safety glass was installed all around, and all windows, doors, and benches were refinished in golden oak, closely matching the original. Numerous coats of maroon paint were applied to the car exterior, hand-rubbed between coats. Then master craftsman Fred Bennett applied the original lettering and leafing to the car in a painstaking, lengthy process. Much of this work was guided by photographs provided by the late Richard Schlaich, who documented the O’Farrell, Jones & Hyde fleet’s appearance at about the time of World War I. It is to this early era that the car was restored.

While at Mint Division, Market Street Railway volunteers also installed steel bars and formed angles to strengthen the corner posts and ribs. There are inherent weaknesses in these cars due to early car-building techniques where posts and ribs were notched and reduced in size to get as large a window as possible fitted. All of the steel installed was cleverly hidden under oak window and seat trim.

Over to Muni
The cosmetic work complete, Market Street Railway turned the car over to Muni in the mid-1990s. There, frankly, it languished for an extended period, even though its preparation for service was supported by top Muni management. A small contingent of cable car barn workers, resistant to change, repeatedly stymied attempts to begin the refitting of the car for service. At one point, though the car was supposed to remain at the cable car barn, they had it trucked to a pier for storage. Then-Muni Executive Director Michael Burns found it there and was furious, ordering it back to the cable car barn, where it was again ignored.

But in summer 2004, Mayor Gavin Newsom saw No. 42 at the car barn while attending the 20th Anniversary ceremonies of the system’s reopening, and took a fancy to it when it was explained that it was intended to be the City’s ceremonial cable car. When UN World Environment Day 2005 was announced, it was decided that No. 42 would play a ceremonial role, representing the zero-emission cable car fleet to the assembled mayors from around the world.

Muni maintenance forces now swung into action on an accelerated basis. They added additional steel to the underframe of the car, to match modifications made to other ex-Cal Cable cars over the years. They fitted modern brake rigging, and new grips. They installed bells on the upper roof, in the same position as today’s California Street cars (but different than the old Cal Cable bells, which were spring-actuated and on the lower roof). They installed standard conductor bells to replace the clappers on the car (though the originals may now be reinstalled). Finally, at the end of May, they took the car out for testing, made minor tweaks, and found the car passed with flying colors.

Because it retains its original Cal Cable configuration, this car, uniquely among the fleet, lacks the hinged grip doors at the ends of the car. (Muni cut doors into the ends of all the California Street cable cars in the mid 1950s to allow them to use the same grip arrangement as the Powell lines.) So while car No. 42 shares the same mechanical components as the rest of the fleet, its grips and dies can only be changed in the car barn, not on the street. If the car develops a bad grip on the street, it must be towed into the barn.

One other difference: At Market Street Railway’s urging, Muni has agreed not to replace the antique glass headlight glass with sealed beam headlights. In fact, to help preserve the car, it has been agreed, for now at least, not to install batteries into the car. These distinctions mean that the car will be reserved for special service in daylight hours only. However, given the thousands of hours of volunteer work put into the restoration of this car, these tradeoffs are considered more than acceptable to give San Franciscans a cable car that looks just as it did almost a century ago.