People all around the world love San Francisco’s vintage streetcars…and now you can vote for your favorite no matter where you are. Our board member Chris Arvin has put together brackets on Facebook and Twitter to make it easy and fun. It’s part of our continuing celebration to welcome back F-line streetcar service from Fisherman’s Wharf to Castro, which resumes May 15.
Fans know that Muni has streetcars from all over the world. Many are unique streetcars more than 90 years old, including its very first streetcar, built in 1912, and an even older little San Francisco streetcar, built in 1896. The largest single group of streetcars are the Art Deco-looking “PCC” cars, of the kind Muni, and 32 other cities around North America once ran. Most of the ones in Muni’s fleet are painted in colorful, accurate designs used 70-80 years ago in those cities.
See all the streetcars in Muni’s historic fleet here.
We’re doing this in a bracket competition like the NCAA “March Madness”. Because brackets require a fixed number of entries, we’ve had to leave off a few cars this time around. So this competition is between cars we expect to actually see operating at some point this year (with a couple of PCCs also held out for space limitations.)
We’re releasing the pairings two at a time on our Twitter account (sfmta), and our Facebook Group (Market Street Railway). You have to request to join the Facebook group, but we’re processing those requests immediately. Once you’re in the group, just scroll down until you see the first round pairings, and vote for your choice. The “polls” will only be open for a limited time for each pair before we have to move on. After we’ve completed the first round of pairings, the survivors will pitted against each other in the second round, and so on. So check our Twitter account or Facebook Group frequently to see new pairings.
If you don’t have Facebook or Twitter, but still want to follow along, here’s a sheet with all the pairings on it. If you have questions, ask them in the comments section below this post, and we’ll try to answer them.
If enough fans like this idea, we’ll do it again!
162 is the best and most favorite
We did not include 162 in this year’s contest, because its trucks are being rebuilt, a job not expected to be completed in 2021. As we stated in the post above, we had to limit the “field” of cars because we were limited to 32 due to the nature of brackets.
Hey Rick, Are there plans to repair 1063 and return it to service? It would be nice to see it run again. Hopefully it does not become a parts department. Looking forward to the next Heritage Days. I was there in 2019 and had a great time. Thanks!
Yes, we are close to getting 1063 into the repair process.
That’s great! Thanks for the update.
I vote for 578S. That’s the neatest car in the system even though it started out at Market Street Railway.