As part of an effort to bring a streetcar line to Downtown Los Angeles, two LA filmmakers produced this tidy little video. It extols the economic and social benefits of streetcar service, and provides nifty computer-generated visualizations of what modern streetcars might look like operating in downtown LA. As an added bonus, the introduction to the video includes some nice historic footage of LA’s streetcar fleet before it was abandoned in 1963:Here’s the complete video:
Following a two-year absence to repair accident damage, Milan tram No. 1807 is back on the F-line today, resplendent in its fresh paint scheme. It is the second of Muni’s ten vintage 1928 Milan trams to be repainted in the yellow and white livery the original trams of this class wore in that Italian city. (No. 1811 was the first, several years ago)The yellow and white livery lasted only a few years in Milan, replaced by a two tone green modeled on Muni’s No. 1818 (recently applied to No. 1888 as well, also under repair). The remaining six F-line Milan trams wear an all-over orange introduced in their home city in the 1970s and still used there. Over an extended period, the plan is to balance out Muni’s Milan fleet among the three liveries, as the trams come up for complete repainting.
It is the oldest street railway line in America, and it’s not in San Francisco. Market Street has had rail transit for 150 years now — the longest duration on a city’s main street — but today, St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans celebrates 175 years of rail transit.
The Monday Chronicle lays out an impressive potential future for Pier 70 on the Central Waterfront. What the article describes (accurately) as “the most intact 19th century industrial complex west of the Mississippi River” is being pitched by the city as a new and very attractive home for high-tech businesses. Mayor Newsom calls the 69-acre bayside site “an extraordinary asset that is vastly underappreciated.”We think so too. That’s why we have consistently advocated Pier 70 as the ultimate terminal for the future E-Embarcadero line (with Muni agreeing to at least keep the option open by including it on vintage streetcar roll signs).
St. Louis streetcar no. 1704 at St. Francis Circle in 1983
The public is invited to take one last look around Transbay Terminal this Friday. The formidable ediface, which started life as a modern (and Moderne) home for trains from three different companies and is finishing it as a forlorn bus shed, was built by the State of California as a terminal for trains crossing the Bay Bridge from the East Bay and beyond — as far as Chico on the old Sacramento Northern.
Eighty-four years after the Declaration of Independence was, er, declared on July 4, 1776, the first street railway on the Pacific Coast opened. It was an odd-looking railroad-type coach, powered by steam, running from Third and Market (pictured below) to 16th and Valencia. By 1867, the noisy steam engine aroused enough neighbors’ ire to be replaced by horsecars. (Guess they preferred the manure.) Cable cars took over as the predominant Market Street transit in 1883, succeeded by electric streetcars in 1906, which endure today as the F-line.Based on input from MSR member and historian Emiliano Echevveria, the Chronicle’s Carl Nolte paints a fascinating picture of this steam operation. It was called the Market Street Rail Road, first of at least five organizaitons (including ours) to bear a similar name. The picture is the only one we’ve seen of this particular operation. It was taken around 1862. Note the cool open seating on the upper deck. The back-to-back seating looking out the sides of the car was the common arrangement of the time for the top deck of transit vehicles in Britain, so perhaps that was the inspiration. Or not. As we say, this was a reasonably obscure operation, but we do know it was the first street railway on the Pacific Coast, and it opened July 4, 1860. We’re mounting a new exhibit at our San Francisco Railway Museum near the Ferry Building, matching historic photos of various transit modes and locations on Market (most provided by Emiliano) with shots of the same places today taken by our member Kevin Sheridan, a great photographer. It will open in mid-July; watch this space for details. We’ll also feature extensive coverage of the history of Market Street transit in the next issue of our member newsletter, Inside Track, due out at the end of July. Join Market Street Railway now, and be sure to get it.
They raised the first steel posts and roof beams yesterday for the new Geneva Canopy. This is the culmination of more than a dozen years of advocacy by Market Street Railway to give the irreplaceable historic streetcar fleet protection from the elements when the vintage streetcars are not on the streets. (We have a major article on this in the new issue of our newsletter, Inside Track, which will be mailed to our members next week.)
