August 1896. Grover Cleveland was president of the 45 United States and William Jennings Bryan and William McKinley were squaring off to replace him in the White House. Adolph Sutro was mayor of San Francisco, ensconced in a palatial home near Land’s End, overlooking Ocean Beach and his moneymaking Cliff House and Sutro Baths. And a new electric streetcar hit the streets of San Francisco.
Remarkably, it’s still with us, the oldest electric passenger streetcar still operated by a North American transit agency: “Dinky” 578.
Electric streetcars were the high-tech breakthrough of that era. Made practical just eight years earlier by Frank Sprague in Richmond, Virginia, electric streetcars couldn’t climb hills as steep as cable cars could, but were much faster on flat ground and four times faster than horsecars, without the many complexities of maintaining animal-powered transit. They quickly replaced cable cars and horse cars all over the world.
San Francisco opened its first electric streetcar line in 1892, with a terminal on Steuart Street, just where our San Francisco Railway Museum is now. A year later, interests associated with the mighty Southern Pacific Railroad consolidated a number of the city’s transit companies into an early namesake of our organization, referred to today as the Market Street Railway Company of 1893 (MSRy1893).
The new company immediately set out on an electric streetcar spree, opening lines that would evolve into today’s 14-Mission and 22-Fillmore, along with numerous new lines in the Western Addition and South of Market. More miles of streetcar tracks were built in 1895 and 1896 than in any other comparable period in the city’s history, including the first conversion of a cable car line to electric streetcars, on Ellis Street.
Quick build
All these new lines needed streetcars, but the nascent streetcar-building industry was centered in the East, and transcontinental transport was deemed too expensive in the 1890s. But the Bay Area did have cable car builders. John Hammond & Company had designed and built a new cable car type for the California Street Cable Railroad Company in 1890, with open end sections and an enclosed center section, operable from either end. (This same type of cable car remains in operation on California Street today, of course.)
MSRy1893 commissioned Hammond to build its entire fleet of new electric streetcars, turning out 170 of the smallest type in two years between mid-1894 and September 1896. Just 26 feet long (about the same as a Powell Street cable car), these “dinkies” rode on a single Peckham truck under the center of the car, with two 35-horsepower GE electric motors, K-10 GE controllers, and mechanical brakes actuated by a lever, like cable cars (air brakes were available, but considered unnecessary and too expensive).
While the “dinkies” were all identical in design, they were painted different colors according to the specific line they were built for. The group built for the Ellis-O’Farrell line was painted bright yellow. The first section of that line opened November 25, 1895, running from Market and Ellis to Golden Gate Park. The outbound route was Ellis, Hyde, O’Farrell, Devisadero (as it was then spelled), Page (moved to Oak three months later), and Stanyan to Haight. Return was via Stanyan, Page, Devisadero, and Ellis to Market. (At the time, MSRy tried to get franchises that used different streets in each direction, to block competitors from getting one of the streets.)
As fifteen dinkies were being built for this line, the route was extended across Market down Fourth Street to Townsend, and then a block east to the Southern Pacific passenger depot at Third. They needed more cars for the extension and roughly doubled the order. Car 578 was one of the last of these, finished on or about August 10, 1896, just in time for the extension’s opening on August 17. While Hammond built the body, the car was wired by MSRy1893 at its Kentucky Street Car House, located at what is now the corner of 23rd and Third Streets in Dogpatch.
Short first life
While many people today see the dinkies as cute, their owner soon realized they were too small for the growing ridership. In fact, there was a car shortage in general, as local car builders were maxed out. Some electric cars had old horsecar trailers coupled to the back to increase capacity. Other tiny horsecars were hastily electrified, though this quickly proved uneconomic.
Rider demand didn’t always match up with predictions, so routes got altered, with “short turn” service added on the busier sections of some lines. Car 578 apparently spent time on such a line, looping on Page and Oak from Fillmore to Golden Gate Park, mostly along the outer end of the Ellis-O’Farrell line.
Bottom, the dinky parades up Market at Sutter with a demonstrator articulated Twin Coach, presumably to show people the difference they could make by voting for the bond issue. (Actually, Muni wouldn’t buy articulated motor coaches until 1984.) Wallace Young collection, MSR Archive
In 1898, Car 578 got additional duties. According to a surviving memo, it and Cars 576 and 577 were assigned as extra Sunday cars on the just-electrified Park & Ocean line. It wore blue canvas banners to cover its painted route lettering as it trundled out H Street (later Lincoln Way) to help handle the crowds headed for the western part of Golden Gate Park, Ocean Beach, and the Cliff House.
In 1902, MSRy1893 became part of United Railroads, which started shifting dinkies to lines with lower ridership as quickly as it could acquire bigger streetcars. By April 18, 1906, Car 578, already considered obsolete, was working less-traveled lines south of Market.
Long second life
The catastrophe that was the 1906 earthquake and fire decimated the city’s transit infrastructure, leading among other things to the replacement of cable cars with streetcars along Market Street. It also generated sympathy for San Francisco, allowing United Railroads to “jump the queue” for new streetcars. Car 578, residing then at the 24th & Utah Streets carbarn (after earlier stints at Turk & Fillmore and Oak & Broderick car houses) survived the quake and fire, but had only months left as a passenger car. A few dinkies continued to serve the famous Fillmore Hill counterbalance line, a few ran franchise-holding runs on such lines as Post & Montgomery (photo, p.5) and others were sold to the independent Presidio & Ferries Railroad, acquired by Muni in 1913 and turned into its original E-Union line. (New, more modern single-truck cars replaced Muni’s original dinkies in 1922).
Car 578 and a handful of other dinkies escaped the scrapyard by being repurposed into work cars, both by United Railroads and by Muni. Their side windows covered over and seats removed, they were distributed to different car houses, as a sand car in 578’s case. Renumbered 0601, early mornings would find it pulling out from Geneva Division (still its home today!) to pick up sand at Market & Valencia shops and then dropping that sand on slippery rails to give passenger streetcars better traction. It passed four quiet decades in service this way, almost certainly accumulating more mileage than it did in its passenger career, which lasted less than ten years.
Salvation
Sand Car 0601 came to Muni in 1944 with the other assets of its last owner, Market Street Railway Company (which took over URR in 1921). The rarely-seen car gained brief public notoriety in 1947 when Muni painted slogans on its exterior and sent it rolling around the system to promote a bond issue that passed, hastening the conversion of streetcars to buses. In essence, it campaigned for its own demise.
That demise came very close to happening. Track space was at a premium as Muni closed or converted streetcar barns. But activism intervened. The Pacific Coast Chapter of the Railroad and Locomotive Historical Society, led by Gilbert Kneiss, paid money to Muni to assist in the sand car’s restoration to its original appearance. Muni General Manager Charles D. Miller approved the preservation effort along with that of Muni’s very first streetcar, Car 1, which had just retired from regular service. Among others involved in the advocacy: Muni maintenance supervisor and transit historian Charles Smallwood the Western Pacific Railroad, and Richard Schlaich.
The original plan was to make the two cars static displays in a proposed railroad museum in the historic Haslett Warehouse (now the Argonaut Hotel) at Aquatic Park, part of a grand preservation dream by Karl Kortum, which yielded the Maritime Museum and the historic ships at the Hyde Street Pier but not the railroad museum, which was finally built in Sacramento.
In 1955, Muni workers, guided by Smallwood, restored sand car 0601 back to its 1896 look and used it the following year as a star of a parade commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1906 disaster. As the Geneva space crunch became critical, Muni removed the Dinky’s motors and sent it and Car 1 to storage at Pier 25, waiting for the museum that never got built.
Then in 1962, Muni pulled the two cars back, restored Car 1 to its 1912 appearance and put a pair of Westinghouse 514L 40-horsepower motors retrieved from an old Los Angeles Railway car, giving it some extra zip. But again, the space crunch shoved the dinky aside. It was sent on what was called “permanent loan” to the Western Railway Museum in Solano County. Muni retained ownership, and had the right to bring it home whenever it wanted.
Patriarch on parade
The advent of the Historic Trolley Festivals of the 1980s, spearheaded by leaders of our nonprofit, provided the perfect rationale to repatriate Car 578. Not only did it appear in Festivals on Market Street, in 1987 it pioneered the “E-Embarcadero” line, towing a generator along the old State Belt freight tracks to the delight of riders, proving the appeal of vintage streetcar service on the waterfront.
In the four decades since it came home, the dinky has steadily grown in recognition and popularity when it appears at special events, such as Muni Heritage Weekend, which we hope will return next year.
There are a few slightly older electric streetcars around, but none that a public agency in the western hemisphere still uses to carry passengers. As it celebrates its 125th birthday, Car 578 is thus one of a kind, an irreplaceable part of our city’s history and a reminder of how San Franciscans got around in the late 19th century.
As for the Ellis-O’Farrell line for which Car 578 was built, it was numbered as the 20-line in the 1910s. Following its 1944 acquisition by Muni, the 20-line was cut back to Market Street in 1947 and converted to buses. The Fourth Street tracks were connected to the end of Muni’s F-Stockton line, fulfilling a long-held dream of reaching the S.P. train depot. In 1950, the 20 was split and extended to form two routes through the Sunset District, the 20A and 20B. The next year, the inner route was moved to Haight Street and renumbered 71 (later combined with the 7-Haight) and 72 (later replaced along Lincoln Way and Sunset Boulevard by part of the 29-Sunset). Also, in 1951, the F-Stockton was replaced by the 30-Stockton trolley bus line, which still serves the train depot (located today a block west at Fourth and Townsend).
