The fiery red of this cable car is a reminder that Powell Street cable cars were painted this way on the day they went up in flames. It was April 18, 1906, when San Francisco was changed forever by the most devastating earthquake-fire combination in American history.
The first of several variations of Muni’s long-time green and cream paint scheme started appearing on Powell Street cable cars in 1946. The next year, Mayor Roger Lapham tried to scrap the Powell cable car system in favor of buses, but he was stopped by civic outrage orchestrated by the famed “cable car lady,” Friedel Klussmann.
This cable car was built in 1887 as part of the original Ferries & Cliff House Railway system, for the general contractor Mahoney Brothers. It features the “Bombay” roof style, with two rows of windows in the raised clerestory ceiling and eyebrow shaped windows at the end of the roof, a more complex design than the simpler roof on Powell cars built by the Carter Brothers in 1893.
Powell Cable Car 28 was built entirely new by Muni’s Cable Car Carpentry Shop while its predecessor was still in service, the only time this has happened. The new Car 28 entered service on January 2, 2004, and the old 28 was retired the same day and put into storage.
California Street Cable Car 50 was built in-house in 1910 by the California Street Cable Railroad Co.
This cable car started its life on the O’Farrell, Jones & Hyde line, and was the last car to operate on that line in 1954, carrying protestors decrying the City’s decision to cut the cable car system’s size in half, including rerouting the scenic Hyde Street trackage to run via Washington and Jackson Streets to join the Powell-Mason line. With way too many double-end cable cars now, Muni cherry picked the best ones to run on a newly-shortened California Street line. Car 51 was the very first cable car to operate on the reopened California line in 1957.
California Street Cable Car 52 was built new in 1996 by Muni’s Cable Car Carpentry Shop. It replaced an older car that had been removed from service in 1957 and was scrapped in 1984.
California Street Cable Car 53 was built in 1907 by W.L. Holman Co. of San Francisco, which supplied most of the replacement fleet for the California Street Cable Railroad Co. after the 1906 earthquake and fire, and which five years later built the first ten streetcars for the new Municipal Railway (Muni).
California Street Cable Car 54 was built in 1907 by J. Hammond & Co. of San Francisco, which supplied the innovative 1890 double-end fleet for the California Street Cable Railroad Co. and many of the replacement cars after the 1906 earthquake and fire. It is the last largely original Hammond car in the fleet (Car 55 was originally built by Hammond but was almost totally rebuilt by Muni in 2023.) Car 54 received a less intensive rebuilding by Muni during the cable car rehabilitation project of 1982-84.
