The “Steel City”, as Pittsburgh has long been called, was also one of the great PCC streetcar cities as well. It operated the world’s first PCC carrying passengers, in August 1936. Its 666 PCCs were second in number to Chicago’s 683 among US operators. It operated PCCs until 1999, one of the longest tenures of any PCC operator.
This car is painted to honor Baltimore, which ran PCC streetcars from 1936 to 1963.
One of the first cities to operate PCCs, Baltimore began with an order of 27 in 1936. The privately owned operator, Baltimore Transit Company (BTC) subsequently placed seven additional orders for the streamliners, eventually acquiring 275 PCCs. They made up just over a quarter of BTC’s huge streetcar fleet, which also included a variety of old-fashioned cars and 150 lightweight high-speed Peter Witt cars ordered in 1930.
Another sordid Saturday morning on the F-line. Eleven a.m., Ferry Building, Wharf-bound. A mob of people waiting as Birmingham 1077 pulls up (see, some of those Newark streetcars DO run!). It’s already packed, but the operator squeezes a few more people in. Then he can’t get the rear doors closed because a passenger is standing on the door-opening treadle and apparently doesn’t understand English (a WHOLE lot of those folks, Europeans, on the line today).
The O’Farrell, Jones & Hyde line was the last complete cable car route built in San Francisco, opening in 1891. By rule, anytime a new cable car line crossed an existing one, the cable of the new line had to be routed beneath the older line’s cable.That meant that operators gripping the new line had to drop (“let go”) their cable at such crossings. The O’Farrell, Jones & Hyde line had 22 cable drops on a round trip. That’s why this 1901 poem by Gellet Burgess says “You are apt to earn your wages, on the Hyde Street Grip.”
African-American employment and leadership has become a proud Muni tradition. San Francisco Municipal Railway photos.
New Chronicle story tonight on the paper’s website, SFGate. Excerpt:
Market Street Railway photo.
Telstar Logistics photo.
Frank Zepeda photo.
Steve Ferrario photo.
