Market Street Railway is a non-profit organization with 1000 members, founded in 1976. Our mission: Preserving Historic Transit in San Francisco.
We receive no government money whatever. We rely instead on private donations and membership dues to help keep San Francisco’s past present in the future. Please click here to learn how to help.
We advocate for historic streetcar and cable car service improvements and expansion, educate people about the importance of attractive transit in creating vibrant, livable cities, and celebrate the wonderful historic streetcars, cable cars, and buses owned and operated by Muni, a service of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA).
We also operate the free San Francisco Railway Museum across from the Ferry Building at 77 Steuart Street, open Tuesdays-Sundays, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Our group’s leaders were the driving force in making vintage streetcars a full-time part of the San Francisco scene in the 1980s and 1990s.
This website, our quarterly member magazine, Inside Track, our monthly electronic newsletter, and our social media outlets bring you the latest news and information about San Francisco’s historic streetcars and cable cars.
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Calling a cable car a trolley may indeed be a sin, but using the word Frisco surely should not. The City was Frisco nearly from the beginning and was known around the world as such. And not just by tourists, but by San Franciscans as well, particularly the sea-going, dock-walloping sort.
Even Herb Caen who authored the “Don’t Call it Frisco” in his column recanted on the notion, referring to it as the worst idea he ever had.
If the City has some imagination we might focus a PR campaign around Frisco, promoting the city and the word in the same way New York used “The Big Apple.”