We’re carrying a new video at our San Francisco Railway Museum that will be of interest to both San Franciscans and railfans.
Cover art from the DVD box for "Municipal Railway Vintage Scrapbook". Click to enlarge.
The DVD offers 90 minutes of motion picture footage chronicling Muni in the post World War II period, through the early 1980s. The video includes route maps of the original Muni lines, with footage from most of them. Early footage features the “Iron Monsters” of the original Muni fleet, but most of the footage is of Muni’s first PCC era, from 1948-1982. There’s some good cable car footage as well.
The video, from Charles Smiley Presents, is narrated with an eye toward rail fans: that is, it focuses rather narrowly on the lines and the streetcars that served them, without much context on how transit served the city. And there are some obvious, if trivial, errors, such as calling Ocean Avenue “Ocean Boulevard.” But the footage itself provides some real time travel opportunities, especially for San Franciscans who were around back then.
The video is not available online, only through dealers, including our museum. We’re selling it for $24.99. So stop in next time you’re down by the Ferry Building!
