Powell Cable Car 19 was built new in 1986 by Muni’s Cable Car Carpentry Shop. It is built in the style of the 1893 car built by Carter Brothers, which it replaced in the fleet. (It is not to be confused with the former Sacramento-Clay cable car of the same number, known as “Big 19”, which runs on special occasions.)

That original car was numbered 519. On December 10, 1967, it was involved in one of the worst accidents in cable car history, losing grip on the cable at the top of the steepest hill in the system, on Hyde Street at Chestnut, and careening down Hyde Street, hitting several automobiles on the way, at least one of which caught fire. The incident injured 43 people, 12 of them seriously. The infamy that Car 519 gained from the accident caused Muni to renumber it as Car 500, a number it kept until Muni removed the first digits from its Powell cable cars in the 1970s, at which point it became Car 19 until its scrapping in the 1980s.

The bad memories of the original Car 519/500 have faded; of course, the new Car 19 contains virtually nothing of that older car.