Fw: [SFMuniHistory] NYTimes: New Life for Old Trolleys (fwd)

This article from SF Muni History group might be of some interest in the
debate about old trams in Melbourne.

Bob Murphy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alan Kline" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, December 09, 2001 4:46 AM
Subject: [SFMuniHistory] NYTimes: New Life for Old Trolleys (fwd)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 8 Dec 2001 06:38:42 -0800
From: Gary R. Kazin <[email protected]>
Reply-To: The Railroad List <[email protected]>,
Gary R. Kazin <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: NYTimes: New Life for Old Trolleys

This is from TOMORROW's Travel section. The on-line version includes
several great photographs.

New Life for Old Trolleys
December 9, 2001
By FRANK J. PRIAL

WHERE do old streetcars go when their number is up? The
lucky ones go to San Francisco. No, not the cable cars.
They may be one of the best-known historic rail systems in
the world, but they are not this city's only old trolley
line. Welcome to the wildly popular F Line, also known as
the Market Street Railway.

Operating daily along Market Street and the city's famous
waterfront, the Embarcadero - a six-mile route - the F Line
uses a collection of 34 elderly streetcars, some of them
restored local trolleys, the rest gathered from all over
the world. Less than two years old in its present form, the
F Line is a runaway hit with both tourists and
once-skeptical San Franciscans and commuters.

The F Line traces its beginnings to 1983. That year, the
San Francisco Chamber of Commerce sponsored a Historic
Trolley Festival, to coincide with the opening of a new
trolley line under Market Street. The city already owned
several old cars, including one dating back to 1912. The
festival was so popular that it was restaged every summer
through 1987. In 1995, the old cars began regular service
between the Castro District and the Financial District near
the Ferry Terminal. But it wasn't until the hated
Embarcadero Freeway, damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta
earthquake, was torn down that the F line came into its
own. With the freeway gone, the old trolleys became an
integral part of the redevelopment of the waterfront. The
extension from the Financial District to Fisherman's Wharf
opened in March 2000 and was an instant sensation.

So successful has the line been that its operator, the San
Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni), a city agency, is eager
to find more old trolley cars to ease the pressure on the
ones they have now and for a new line. In addition to the
eight or nine San Francisco cars (the number changes as
cars are restored or retired temporarily for refitting),
the present fleet includes aged streetcars, or trams as
they are known in Europe, from Milan; Oporto, Portugal;
Melbourne, Australia; Hiroshima and Osaka, Japan;
Blackpool, England; Moscow; Hamburg, Germany (the 1954 "Red
Baron") and New Orleans (yes, it's named Desire).

The color schemes can be quite beautiful, and are
wonderfully varied. The New Orleans car is a dark hunter
green with burgundy trim. The Milan cars are the easiest to
spot - they are all bright orange. The 1934 Blackpool car,
an open-air boatcar (it looks just like a big excursion
boat), is cream with dark green trim. And the 1912 Russian
car, which ran both in Moscow and Orel, is red with white
trim. Car 130, which arrived in San Francisco just in time
to handle crowds for the 1915 World's Fair, is blue and
yellow.

Besides Car 130, the oldest cars include No. 578-S, which
was built in 1895 from a cable-car design and is thought to
be one of the oldest operable streetcars in the world; Car
1, the first streetcar bought by San Francisco when it
started what was the first major publicly owned transit
system in the country; and the New Orleans car, which dates
from 1924.

Some of the old cars have yet to make their debut. One of
them is Car 798, which was built in San Francisco, also in
1924, sold for scrap after World War II, then used as a
jewelry store in Columbia, Calif., in the Sierra foothills.
With a grant from the Embarcadero Center, the Market Street
Railway brought it home in 1984; it was rebuilt in a
vocational school and restoration work has now begun.

The oldest cars usually operate only along the waterfront
and only for special events. They are too fragile and too
valuable for constant use. The Market Street Railway, a
nonprofit organization of streetcar enthusiasts and San
Francisco fans, works closely with the Municipal Railway in
raising funds to acquire and help restore additional
vintage streetcars for the city.

"It's important to buy the cars while they still exist and
worry about restoring them later," says Rick Laubscher,
president of Market Street Railway.

Seventeen of the F line vintage trolleys are 1940's Art
Deco PCC's, 3 from San Francisco and 14 purchased from
Philadelphia. PCC stands for Presidents' Conference
Committee, a group of electric railway officials who
commissioned the car in the early 1930's when most of
America's streetcars were still wooden turn-of-the-century
relics.

The last PCC built, in 1952, is part of the fleet here. No.
1040, it is painted in the old San Francisco trolley
colors, green and cream. Another, No. 1010, is painted in
the blue and gold scheme adopted for the 1939 World's Fair
at Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay. PCC's, which once
ran in 33 cities in this country and Canada, are sturdy;
Newark retired its last 24 in August after 46 years of
continuous service. Negotiations are under way to bring
some or all of the old Newark cars to San Francisco.

Eleven of San Francisco's antique cars are Peter Witt trams
(named for the American who designed them), built in Milan
in the late 1920's. Milan gave San Francisco one as a gift
in 1984 and the city bought 10 more in 1998.

Even though they began their careers here in San Francisco,
some F line PCC's have been repainted in the colors PCC's
wore in other cities. In addition to Newark, they include
Philadelphia, Chicago, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Cincinnati,
Louisville, Kansas City, Mo., Boston and Brooklyn. Older
tourists are often astonished when a streetcar almost
identical to the ones they knew in their hometowns years
ago rounds a corner and, bell clanging, rumbles past. The F
line motormen are often asked: "Why isn't one painted in my
hometown's colors? We had PCC's for years."

A second historic-streetcar line is already being planned.
It would run the length of the Embarcadero to the new
Pacific Bell Stadium and the adjoining Caltrain railroad
terminal. To be known as the E Line, it would share the
southern part of the N Line route with the sleek new
light-rail vehicles, or LRV's, that began replacing the
PCC's on most of the city's streetcar lines 20 years ago.

While the F Line is fast becoming one of San Francisco's
most popular tourist attractions, it may turn out to be
much more. Day after day, it is reminding visitors of
something they may have forgotten: that trolleys are a good
way to get around congested cities.

FRANK J. PRIAL is a reporter and wine columnist for The
Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/09/travel/TROLLEY.html?ex=1008830937&ei=1&en=
1d331944c8340f9e

Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company

=====
Gary R. Kazin
DL&W Milepost R35.7
Rockaway, New Jersey

New Jersey Transit - THE WAY TO GO!!!

(I have no affiliation with New Jersey Transit.)

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