The 'Octopus' Moves the Mail
Our organization’s namesake, the Market Street Railway Company (of 1893), consisted of the Market Street Cable Railway and many smaller competitors that its Southern Pacific owners had voraciously gobbled up. This and other business tactics won it the unflattering description of ‘Octopus’ in a San Francisco Chronicle article of February 19, 1895... (more)

San Mateo by Streetcar
Public transit promotion a century ago. In April 1904, San Francisco’s United Railroads (URR) began a monthly publication, Transit Tidings, ‘for the convenience of its patrons and the information of the public.’ The first issue asked readers to describe the ‘most interesting round trip’ on URR... (more)

Ding Dong Daddy: The real story
January, 1945—newsboys at the Ferry Loop screaming headlines about the Battle of the Bulge and MacArthur closing in on Manila, their voices competing with screeching streetcar wheels and boat whistles. Open the paper—San Franciscans on casualty lists every day. Turn to the ads—the hot movie is Meet Me in St. Louis, with Judy Garland singing “Clang clang clang went the trolley.” An instant hit... (more)

"My City, My Game"
"This is my city and my game...You birds’ll be in New York or Constantinople or some place else. I’m in business here." Thus spoke Sam Spade in Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, the progenitor of the hard-boiled detective novel and now, in the 75th anniversary year of its publication, widely recognized as a seminal work of American literature... (more)

For Future Reference
It's just a matter of time. One of these not-so-fine mornings, San Francisco will wake up and discover that the manic-progressives of public transportation have finally achieved their secret ambition. There will be a strange new silence in the air. The slotted streets will seem uncomfortably quiet. And the people will look at each other in sudden consternation and gasp: "The cable cars—our cable cars—they've taken them away!"... (more)

"Fair, Please"
Streetcars to the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition. During the first weeks of 1915, Pancho Villa proclaimed himself in charge of Mexico. Germany began open submarine warfare in the Atlantic as the Lusitania prepared to sail to England. California’s only active volcano, Mount Lassen, was erupting—spewing ash for hours at a time... (more)

Snapshot of History
The growing national interest in genealogy is bringing Market Street Railway interesting insights into San Francisco history. Because we share the name of Muni’s old privately-owned competitor (from 1921 to 1944), we receive a steady stream of inquiries over the Internet from descendants of people who once worked for our namesake... (more)

1954: Bitter loss
In the wee hours of Sunday morning, May 16, 1954, several hundred San Franciscans gathered at California and Hyde Streets. They weren’t late-night shopping at the Cala Market, but rather were protesting what was then happening to the previous occupants of that property—cable cars. Well after midnight, O’Farrell, Jones & Hyde car No. 51 crested Russian Hill and approached the old carbarn and powerhouse, headed for history... (more)

1984: Rejuvenation
When the reduced cable car system reopened in 1957, it was still old. During the lengthy shutdown of the California and Hyde Street trackage, Muni focused on consolidating operations with its Powell lines, not on complete renewal. Capital funding, as usual, was in short supply, so much so that in this same period, Muni had to effect a complicated lease arrangement for used PCC streetcars from St. Louis so the last of its original streetcar fleet could finally be replaced... (more)

Practial, Thrifty Celebration for Muni's 80th Birthday
San Francisco's Municipal Railway celebrated its 80th birthday yesterday with a rainy day ceremony to honor an elderly railcar that has been a drudge all its life. Even decked out in brand new gray paint with gold trim and flying four little flags, car C-1 would never be mistaken for a thing of beauty. It looks a bit like an outhouse mounted atop a dump truck, the kind of thing a small child might make out of blocks of wood... (more)

The Story of the Retired Car Conductor
I was born and brought up in Duxbury, Mass., and I had a close call to escape bein' named Wrestling Brewster, one of my mother's family names. My father voted for just plain Eli Cook, howsomever, and dad most always generally won. It might have made considerable difference to me, maybe, for as it was, whether from my name or nature, I rather took after my father, who was no mortal good... (more)

The End of the Innocence
Market Street, 1957. Few felt it, but a seismic shift in American culture had begun. Grandfatherly Ike was President, friendly dairyman George Christopher was Mayor, stalwart Republicans both. Most white, middle-class San Franciscans (the majority then) saw these as comfortable times, and change as not terribly threatening... (more)

Streetcars In the Sunset
Trolleys transformed sand dunes into neighborhood of today. When one thinks of San Francisco’s Sunset District, the image of fog, cold salty winds, and sand dunes comes to mind. People have aptly developed their perceptions of this part of San Francisco. While it might be sunny and warm in the Mission District, the Sunset often shivers under a blanket of fog with a biting wind off the ocean and a temperature fifteen degrees lower.. (more)

Historic Transit Heartland
Castro’s seen just about everything. Cable cars on Castro? An 'elevated' railway at Harvey Milk Plaza? Four streetcar tracks on Market? It’s all part of the transit history in a San Francisco neighborhood that has truly seen it all over the years... (more)

Streetcars and Parks
In San Francisco history, a controversial combination. One proposal for extending historic streetcar service would use the tracks of the F-line and N-line to reach Ninth Avenue and Irving Street, then head north on new tracks into Golden Gate Park with a terminal at the park concourse to serve the rebuilt deYoung Museum and California Academy of Sciences. The historic context of trolleys and Golden Gate Park is both interesting and controversial... (more)

End of the Line
The Last Days of the B & C. Of the dozens of San Francisco streetcar lines that disappeared in the quarter-century between soup kitchens (the 1930s) and Sputnik (1957), none has been more lamented than the last line to go. The final revenue streetcars on Muni’s B-Geary line operated on December 29, 1956—44 years and one day after the Municipal Railway was born on that very Geary Street corridor... (more)

Maurice Klebolt: 1930-1988
Remembering a trolley titan fifteen years later. I woke up to the news on Saturday, October 1, 1988. Fellow Market Street Railway director Jack Smith was on the phone. “Rick, we lost the big man last night.” I knew immediately what he meant, though I desperately wanted to be wrong. Maurice Klebolt was dead. The Godfather of the Trolley Festival, the saviour of streetcars on Market Street, the man who never stopped working to protect vintage rail in San Francisco...gone... (more)

Santacade!
As I headed out from Market Street Railway’s venerable Flood Building office one day during the holiday season a few years back, I encountered a stunning site at Powell and Market. Headed in from Castro was New Orleans No. 952, decked out in the wreaths and garlands supplied by our volunteers. Just then, cable car No. 13, similarly decorated by the cable car barn crew, rumbled onto the turntable... (more)

A Streetcar Named Undesirable
A German streetcar was trundled on the back of a flatbed truck to the front steps of City Hall yesterday where city officials fashioned a reluctant welcome for the unbidden gift. The occasion was pronounced “a triumph” by Maurice Klebolt, the portly Municipal Railway gadfly who brought the 35-year old tram from Hamburg but neglected to tell the Muni... (more)