SFMSR
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Hot rods and streetcars
We’re going to be featuring more profiles of the people who make the streetcars and cable cars run. Today: SFMTA machinist Bob Brown, part of a skilled Muni heavy rail overhaul team.
Seeing ‘halfway to the stars’ again
“To be where little cable cars/ Climb halfway to the stars/”
Sure, it’s a Mack!
By Rick Laubscher, Market Street Railway President
What about the next 25 years?
By Rick Laubscher, Market Street Railway President
35 years ago, the dream became real
Editor’s Note: 2018 marks the 35th anniversary of the first San Francisco Historic Trolley Festival, the demonstration project led by now-MSR president and CEO Rick Laubscher that proved the value of historic streetcars in regular service on Market Street and led directly to the creation of the permanent F-line, which is now the most popular traditional streetcar line in America. The following is excerpted from remembrances Rick shared with Inside Track on the 20th anniversary of the first Festival, in 2003, updated to include subsequent events. With a couple of exceptions, the photos in this story have never been published.
Patience and persistence
Our valued Market Street Railway members make it possible for us to do what we do. But exactly what is it that we do? You see the obvious: our San Francisco Railway Museum, our promotion of the streetcars and cable cars to engage new generations of fans, our streetcar acquisition, our Inside Track members magazine, and much more. But really, the most important thing we have done over the past 35 years is like an iceberg: it’s 90 percent invisible from the surface.
Cable car kaleidoscope
Cable cars have clattered along Powell Street since 1888. The Powell cable lines have had five different owners, including, for the past 72 years, the City and County of San Francisco’s Municipal Railway. These five owners painted the “halfway to the stars” cars in ten significantly different liveries (paint schemes) over their 128-year history.
Hyde at 125
On February 9, 1891, a new sound echoed along O’Farrell, Jones, and Hyde Streets: the rumble of cable cars. It was already a familiar sound across most of San Francisco, of course, including its main street, Market. But on that date, cable cars came to the Tenderloin and Russian Hill as well. The opening of that line, 125 years ago, turned out to be the zenith of cable cars in the world. It was all downhill from there for cable cars as a major transit technology. Yet this last line—or at least part of it—has endured to become the most beloved cable line of all.
San Francisco in Pennsylvania
Story and photos by Jack Demnyan
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