We keep San Francisco's vintage streetcars on track.

From 1891 to 1954, double-end cable cars, almost identical to those on California Street, rambled from Market & O’Farrell streets through Union Square, the Tenderloin, and over Nob and Russian Hills to reach Hyde and Beach Streets near Aquatic Park. The City killed the inner part of that line and combined the outer part with one of the Powell Street cable lines to create the Powell-Hyde line in 1957.

Now as a special event for San Francisco history buffs and cable car fans, the last unaltered O’Farrell, Jones & Hyde cable car will carry passengers down Hyde Street Saturday and Sunday mornings, September 8-9. It’s the first time the car has been in regular passenger service on Hyde Street in 64 years. Expert grip (and MSR Member) Val Lupiz will be at the controls. Val supplied the vintage photo above, taken at Chestnut and Hyde, probably in the early 1950s. The modern matching shot was taken on a VIP run by Frank Zepeda.

The special car, reacquired by Market Street Railway and restored by expert volunteers and Muni pros, will operate as follows as part of Muni Heritage Weekend:

• Leaves Washington & Mason Streets at 10 a.m. sharp each day
• Riders must queue on the north sidewalk on Washington, just west of Mason.
• Regular $7 cable fare will be charged for the one-way trip to Hyde & Beach
• When car lays over at Hyde & Beach, riders will have to get off and rebound in a separate queue at the boarding area. The $7 fare will be charged again.
• Car 42 will then depart Hyde and Beach operating via Hyde, Washington, Powell, Jackson, reverse direction on Hyde then on Hyde to California, California to Van Ness, reverse car again, then California to Drumm.
• At that point, Car 42 will begin regular service on the California line until 5 p.m. both days.

This opportunity may not come around again. What a perfect way to start Heritage Weekend!

Because of unforeseen events, Muni Heritage Weekend events will start later and finish later on September 8-9 this year. But there are still going to be very special happenings for transportation fans of all ages.

A climate change protest will close Market Street late morning of Saturday, September 8 and a footrace sponsored by the Giants will close traffic lanes on The Embarcadero Sunday morning. Both these events were scheduled after our dates were locked down and there’s really nothing we can do about it.

At the epicenter of Muni Heritage Weekend, our San Francisco Railway Museum, events will get underway Saturday at 12 Noon with a cable car bell-ringing demonstration by all-time champ Carl Payne. Carl will also offer instruction to kids of all ages, who can take a turn on the bell of motorized cable car 62 (the first motorized cable car ever created, by the way), which will be on display in the plaza across the F-line tracks from our museum.

At 1 pm, or possibly slightly earlier, vintage streetcars and buses will begin carrying passengers.
The following streetcars will offer free rides all afternoon between our Museum and Pier 39, along The Embarcadero (last runs of the day leave the museum at 5 pm):

• 1896 “Dinky” 578, the oldest streetcar operated by a transit agency in America today
• 1912 Muni Car 1, the first publicly owned streetcar in America
• 1934 Blackpool, England open-top “boat tram” 228, perfect for a waterfront “cruise”

Additionally, the following vintage streetcars will be in regular service on either the E or F lines, at regular Muni fares.

• 1952 “EuroPCC” 737, on the F-line
• 1928 Melbourne W2 tram 496on the E-line
• 1946 Melbourne SW6 tram 916on the E-line (pending resolution of a bearing problem)
• 1952 Muni Car 1040, the last PCC built in North America, on the F-line
• 1948 Muni double-end PCC 1006, 1008(or both), on the E-line
• A variety of other PCCs and 1928 Milan tramson the F-line

The following vintage buses will offer FREE rides all afternoon (last runs of the day leave the museum at 5 pm):

Trolley coaches – operating on the old 20-line via Columbus Ave. to Washington Square:

• 1950 Marmon-Herrington Coach 776
• 1975 Flyer Coach 5300

Motor coaches – operating to Levi’s Plaza via part of the 82x-line:

• 1938 White Motor Co. Coach 042
• 1956 Mack Coach 2230 (debuting this year, if a water pump issue can be resolved)
• 1970 GMC “Fishbowl” Coach 3287
• 1975 AM General Coach 4154
• One or two newer vintage coaches to be finalized

There will be kids’ activities both afternoons on the plaza across from the museum and a special sale of memorabilia at our San Francisco Railway Museum. It’s a great time to pick up your 2019 Museums in Motion calendar and other great items. Remember, MSR Members get 10% off all merchandise. Also, Heritage weekend only, SFMTA employees get 10% off all merchandise if they show their badge.

On the cable car front, we are finalizing some very special plans for O’Farrell, Jones & Hyde cable car 42, which we reacquired for Muni and cosmetically restored. We’ll announce those plans separately on our website, www.streetcar.org, but beyond those, Car 42 will be offering regular service on the California Street cable car line in the afternoons, both Saturday and Sunday.

Also, both days at 5 pm, I will be giving my talk, “Coming to Town” about the ways across the Bay from 1875 to today, at our museum. This accompanies the new exhibit of that name that has just opened, and features some rare historic photos.

We hope you can join us for Heritage Weekend this year.

Yep, you read that right. Before Market Street had electric streetcars, cable cars, or horse-powered streetcars, it had a STEAM-powered streetcar. In fact, this was the first rail transit on Market Street, started up in 1860.

This photo, which we had not seen before, just surfaced on a Facebook group, without a source reference. It shows Market Street during the Civil War (the date given is 1864, and that seems at least very close). We’re looking west, toward Twin Peaks. The downtown hadn’t been built out that far in 1864; you can see the empty lands and sand hills in the distance. We’re in between the numbered streets on the south side, so that intersection on the north side is most likely O’Farrell and Dupont (later Grant Avenue — its namesake was still earning his right to have an SF street named after him at this time).

Note the giant American flag, reminding one and all that California was a Union state. Also note the boardwalks for pedestrians, the streetamps that probably used kerosene (piped gas was still in the future, along with electricity), and the lack of traffic.

And, wait, wait, in the distance, that rectangular object in the middle of the street is — a streetcar powered by steam.

It and three others belonged to the Market Street Railroad, first of several companies to incorporate the city’s main street into its name. They carried both passengers and baggage. The line opened on July 4, 1860, operating from Third and Market Streets to 16^thand Valencia Streets. This was an unusual application of steam power, and expensive to operate. It was extended eastward to the foot of Market and south on Valencia to 26^thStreet, but proved a financial failure, forcing conversion to horsecar operation in 1867. Yet this first line demonstrated the importance of fixed-route transit in developing neighborhoods.

As it turned out, steam-powered transit got a second life on Market from 1880-1888, when a steam dummy and trailer covered the western end of the street from Valencia to Castro, until cable car service was extended. More conventional steam passenger trains carried people from the geographic center of the city to the Cliff House and Ocean Beach later on.

Here’s a closer-up photo of the first steam-powered streetcar, taken near the opening in 1860. It’s the only one we knew to exist, until now.

We don’t have a steam train to ride on Muni Heritage Weekend, September 8 and 9, but there’ll be some great electric streetcars, cable cars, and buses. Come to our San Francisco Railway Museum, 77 Steuart Street, between 11 am and 5 pm (new times–we’ll explain shortly).

Just when you think you’ve seen it all, you haven’t. A couple of months ago, we got a call asking whether we recognized the location of a film. We did — Pacific Avenue. We had never seen motion pictures of that line, which closed in 1929. Now, the video has been posted on YouTube, with additional information on the provenance of the film.

It was professionally shot, with sound, by a Movietone Newsreel crew, which spent several days filming the line between Larkin and Divisadero, including the closing parade in November 1929. This was the last line still operating grip and trailer cars, and the crew was particularly intrigued by how they reversed direction at the end of the line. We were too.  Amazing to watch the ballet between the gripman and conductor as they swap the dummy and trailer to reverse direction. No layover, either!

The Pacific Avenue cable line was a real artifact. The Sutter Street Railroad ran several lines. This one, built in 1890-91 in an unusual wide (5-foot) gauge, ran up Ninth Street and Larkin to Pacific Avenue, then westward to Divisadero Street. After the 1906 earthquake, most of the line was converted to electric streetcar operation. But the Pacific Avenue portion was still cable operated, in part because of the grades, and in part because of the affluent neighborhood’s objections to “unsightly” overhead wires. United Railroads took over the line in 1902, then it passed to our namesake, Market Street Railway Company, in 1921. It was a big money loser for them, since it ran mostly along residential blocks and didn’t serve any real shopping or employment destinations. Besides, for much of its length, the 3-Jackson streetcar, which went straight downtown, ran parallel and just a block south. Market Street Railway finally won the right to abandon it and the farewell party is captured here.

The No. 46 grip car and No. 54 trailer car from this line are on display at the San Francisco Cable Car Museum. Joe Thompson’s Cable Car Guy website has the full history of this line, written by the incomparable Emiliano Echeverria and the late Walter Rice.

Some great scenes here. Love the two Pacific Heights matrons playing railfan, changing their seats to stay up front when the grip car reversed. The parade is priceless.

As always, we at Market Street Railway welcome your support in helping us preserve historic transit in San Francisco.

Lots of buzz about the new $2.1 Salesforce Transit Center holding its grand opening Saturday, August 11. For example, this story in the Examiner, worth a read for the historic context. Or this one, about the incredible park atop the terminal. Or this one, about the loonnng delay in getting train service (commuter and high-speed to LA) into the terminal  in the afternoon.

But in this post, we’re inviting everyone to the new center’s bus deck at 1 pm on Saturday, August 11 to hear a presentation by Market Street Railway President Rick Laubscher called “Coming to Town: Gateway to San Francisco, 1875-Today.” Rick will talk about the way San Francisco welcomed commuters and visitors entering the city from the East, from the years just after the Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869, to the dedication of the shiny new center that very day, including two-and-a-half Ferry Buildings and the original Transbay Terminal, hosting three different railroads that crossed the Bay Bridge when it was new.

Rick will be presenting next to a vintage Muni bus (you’ll have to show up to see which one), and will illustrate the talk with some rare photographs.

Some of those rare photographs are part of the new exhibit of the same name — Coming to Town — that opens at our San Francisco Railway Museum that same day, Saturday, August 12. It’s quite a story.

The photo at the top, for example, from the John Bromley Collection of our Market Street Railway Archive, shows trains in the then-new Transbay Terminal in 1939 or 1940. That train in the center is from the Sacramento Northern Railroad, and ran along much of what is now BART’s right-of-way through Contra Costa County, then crossed Suisun Bay on a ferry and continued to Sacramento, with some trains going as far as Chico!

And to bring things up to date, the photo below, taken just last week, shows a brand new diesel bus on the 7-Haight-Noriega with SF Transit Center as its destination (SF standing for Salesforce, not San Francisco in this case — Muni buses have been using the ground level bus stops there for a month now).  But looky looky next to it: a 1928 Milan tram incorrectly signed for “Transbay Terminal” as its destination. (The F-line streetcars used the old tracks to the old terminal from 1995 until 2000, when the extension to Fisherman’s Wharf opened.)  Nice catch by the photographer.

We also want to give a shout out to Jeremy Menzies’ “Tales of the Old Transbay Terminal” on Muni’s blog. Some great photos from the archives of the Western Railway Museum in Rio Vista Junction, which occupies the old Sacramento Northern right-of-way through the area and has preserved an interurban car identical to the one pictured above.

So, on Saturday, August 11, come by First and Mission Streets at 1 pm to see Rick Laubscher’s talk on the bus deck, then tour the fabulous new center during its open house, which includes the one-time-only opportunity to walk along the bus-only ramp connecting the center to the Bay Bridge. Here are all the details on the open house.

Then, at any point in the next six months or so, come to the San Francisco Railway Museum to see the new “Coming to Town” exhibit.

August 2, 1873 — In the wee small hours of a misty San Francisco night (they didn’t call the month “Fogust” back then, but it was), a new type of transit was about to be inaugurated. An endless wire rope clattered beneath Clay Street. An odd open vehicle sat on the rails at the top of the hill. Standing by was Andrew Smith Hallidie, a Scot who had experience using wire rope in the mining business, and was part of the team promoting this new technology, aimed at making horsecars obsolete.

The operator of the little car peered out over the edge of the steep hill and decided, “No.” As the story goes, Hallidie himself stepped up, gripped the wire rope, went down the hill safely, and the cable car was born.

Some historians argue over the details of that opening run, but we’re not going to get into that here. We’ll just say that the first line, on Clay Street, became part of a longer line in the late 1880s that ran one way on Clay and the other on Sacramento Street. At that point, it began being served by new single-end cable cars without the trailers you see in this engraving from Wikimedia Commons.

On April 18, 1906, earthquake and fire wiped out identical cable cars that served Powell Street, so the cars from the Sacramento-Clay line were moved to Powell, where many still run to this day. Larger double-end cable cars took over on the Sacramento-Clay line and lasted until 1942 when the line was shut. One of the last group of Sacramento-Clay cable cars (Car 19, built in 1907) has been restored, thanks in part to advocacy from Market Street Railway, and is stored upstairs in the cable car barn at Washington and Mason Streets. Downstairs, in the Cable Car Museum, the last surviving original car from the Clay Street Hill Railroad, Grip Car 8, is on display.

While you haven’t been able to ride a cable car on Clay Street for 76 years, you can still ride cable cars that ran on Clay Street back in the 1890s. Current Powell cable car 11 (above), built in 1893 by Carter Brothers and recently refurbished by Muni’s shops, ran on the Sacramento-Clay line until 1906, and was recently repainted into its original Sacramento-Clay livery from the 1890s at Market Street Railway’s suggestion.

The other surviving Powell cable cars that once ran on Clay Street include numbers 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10, 12, 16, 17, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, and 27. (Thanks to Joe Thompson’s Cable-Car-Guy website for the authoritative roster.) If you climb aboard any of these cars on the Powell-Hyde or Powell-Mason lines today, you’re experiencing a connection back to the first street on which cable cars ever ran.

Happy 145th Anniversary of the first successful cable car system!

That’s the title of a great piece by Justin Franz on the Trains Magazine website today. Click the link and read it. It really says everything that needs to be said about the history and popularity of San Francisco’s vintage streetcar operation.  Thanks, Justin, for the story, and thanks, Muni, for the dedicated people who run and maintain these treasures.

Just to be clear, the headline on Justin’s piece refers to the streetcars themselves, what we call the “Museums in Motion”. As he writes, “MUNI’s streetcars look like museum pieces, but don’t think for a second think they’re static.” That’s exactly why we’ve worked so hard in our advocacy for the past 35 years: restore streetcars to their “natural habitat” — the STREET — where today’s riders can feel the rumble, hear the squeals, experience what generations past experienced — in the same type of streetcar, on the same street. We appreciate the recognition.

A reminder that we totally depend on donations and memberships from people who love the “Museums in Motion” like we do. We receive no government money at all. Your donations and memberships make it possible to continue the successful advocacy that created San Francisco’s vintage streetcar lines in the first place, and keeps them on track today. Please consider supporting us. (You can donate as little as $5, less cost than one round-trip on the streetcars.)

For those who clicked through to our website from the link in the article, a reminder that Muni Heritage Weekend will feature special appearances by streetcars, buses, and a cable car that are only rarely (if at all) in the daily service Justin describes. Heritage Weekend is September 8 and 9 this year, centered at our San Francisco Railway Museum near the Ferry Building, which also functions as an interpretive center for the “Museums in Motion”. We’ll have more about Muni Heritage Weekend on this site in a few days.

Val Lupiz, expert gripman and San Francisco historian, was hosted on July 18 by MSR Board member Paul Lucas in the second installment of Market Street Railway’s quarterly series Inside Track-Live! A packed house at our San Francisco Railway Museum was treated to hearing how Val started as a rail-obsessed kid, to being the only gripman to operate historic Cable Car 42 in multiple Muni Heritage Festivals. Val’s stories ranged from heartwarming— helping passengers with marriage proposals— to uproarious— how he earned the nickname Mr. 12 o’clock and gripes from other grips.

The event was live-streamed in a Market Street Railway first. Audience members, both in person at the Museum and online, engaged in a fascinating question and answer session. The daughter of San Francisco’s first African American Cable Car operator, Sam McDaniel, attended with her own granddaughter—prompting a murmur of recognition from the audience and providing insights into the human aspects of San Francisco’s Cable Car system.

Here’s the link to the FB Live video of Val’s talk. It is also available on YouTube, broken into two parts:

• Part 1 is at https://youtu.be/tEPgP_bOgb4
• Part 2 is at https://youtu.be/fEtMoph543g

Keep an eye on streetcar.org for our upcoming events and news on Muni Heritage Weekend, planned for September 8 and 9!

As our Members and friends know, the original F-line fleet of PCC streetcars, 16 in all, is being completely restored at Brookville Equipment Company in Brookville, Pennsylvania. The latest streetcar to arrive in San Francisco, rolling in as this is being written on July 25, is Car 1052, painted to honor Los Angeles Railway. We call it the “Shirley Temple Car” because that child star dedicated the first car of this design to operate in Los Angeles, in 1937. But picking up on the abbreviation of the operator (LARy), some folks call it “Larry” instead.

By whatever name, our network of relentless spies has been tracking the streetcar’s progress back to Muni. That photo collage on Facebook by Cary TIntle at the top captures the 1052 leaving Brookville (a charming small town, by the way) on July 19. Below, a shot crossing the wide open spaces of Iowa on July 21.

And finally, from MSR Member James Giraudo, who lives in Nevada, a shot of the car yesterday at a truck stop in Fallon.

We love the dedicated fans who provide all these great photos of streetcars on the move.

The truck that dropped off 1052 is picking up “Green Hornet” Car 1058 today, the last of the 13 single-end cars in this contract to go to Brookville. Of the original F-line fleet, only double-end Car 1007 remains in San Francisco, and it will head east when the next car at Brookville comes back. We’ll have more information about the double-end PCCs in this contract in a future post.