Attention shutterbugs! The F-line’s historic streetcars will head back to Cameron Beach Division via the J-Church line today and tonight (Friday, November 6). Grab your cameras and snap away!
The historic fleet has been exiled to Muni Metro East, just off Third Street on the T-line, for well over a year now. Light rail vehicles have been stored at Cameron Beach (formerly the venerable Geneva Division, opened as a streetcar yard in 1900!) instead, during reconstruction of the tracks at their home across the street, Green Division.
But with access to Muni Metro East cut off for the next eight days while Muni installs switches at Fourth and King Streets to connect to the future Central Subway, the only way to continue streetcar service on the F-line is the send the fleet back to Beach. (The E-Embarcadero line will NOT operate this weekend due to the Fourth and King construction.)
Market Street Railway wants this return to be permanent, not temporary. The historic fleet has been unprotected for too long already, while the $9 million protective canopy we worked so long and hard to have built at Beach has been all but unused.
With predictions of an El Nino-driven wet winter, it is more important than ever that the streetcars get back under that canopy — and stay there whenever they’re not in service. That’s why, even if the fleet is sent back to Muni Metro East at the conclusion of the Fourth and King work, we will strongly advocate for their permanent return to Cameron Beach before the heavy rains start. The City has too big an investment in these streetcars to leave them unprotected through a winter like this.
We invite photographers to post photos of pull-ins to Beach on the J-line on our Market Street Railway group on Facebook, or email them to rick@streetcar.org tonight, and we’ll post the best ones over the weekend!
Let’s all welcome the fleet back home!
