Trolley Tuesday 4/20/21 - Muni and MSR's Streetcar Fleet

No, we're not doing a weed joke today. After all, you shouldn't operate public transit while high.

Whenever we talk about the types of streetcars a company's used over its lifetime, it's always a struggle to find out which ones to talk about. Sometimes, a fleet may be a little too boring or too under-reported to write something interesting about, while others may have one or two significant cars with the rest being generics or home-builds. For San Francisco, however, it seems almost every car they've had from the first electric cars in the 1890s all the way to the modern day has been significant in some way. Thus, bear with us (and the length of this report) on this lovely Trolley Thursday as we open up the Muni Geneva Division Carhouse and appreciate the artful cars of the San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni) and the Market Street Railway (MSR)!

  

Clearly Classy Cable Cars

In an 1885 postcard photo, massive Market Street Railway cable cars
 dwarf small horsecars at the old Ferry Terminal.
(Unknown Author)

A contemporary ad of Burnham, Standeford & Co.
advertising their Powell Street cars.
(SF Cable Car Museum)

During the Golden Age of the Cable Car, construction of the rolling stock remained highly localized until the 1910s. At the time, the main contractors for the Powell Street Lines (then known as the Ferries & Cliff House Railway, or F&CH) was the Mahoney Brothers of San Francisco and the Carter Brothers of Newark, California. The former were billed as "contractors" and were responsible for the construction of the Powell-Mason and Powell-Jackson lines, with their cars subcontracted out to Burnham-Standeford & Company in 1887. The latter, founded by Thomas and Martin Carter, produced well over 10,000 cars in their twenty-eight years of existence and also included horsecars, cable cars, turntables and narrow gauge equipment, between 1893 and 1894. These early cars the same roof profile as the horsecars they replaced, but interestingly they all originally came without front windscreens; this was possible due to them being essentially a grip car mashed together with a horse car and it seemed windscreens weren't needed... yet. 

How to tell apart a Carter Brothers car from a Mahoney Brothers?
The tell-tale "bombay roof" on No. 28 (right) was a Mahoney Bros. specialty.
(SF Cable Car Museum)

A "Park, Cliff House & Ferries"-bound cable car
of the Market Street Railway Company, one of the
plainer examples of a Powell car of the time.
(Market Street Railway)

Like the California Street cars built by the John L. Hammond & Company, these cable cars were all works of art, with most featuring elaborate scrolled/wrought brass handrails and roof supports, artfully-filigreed decoration on the sides of the enclosed sections, and fanciful "minaret" (I don't know what else to call them) vents atop the roofs. For protection's sake, the cars also featured wooden slats or metal grilles across the wheels under the enclosed section for safety. However, cable cars couldn't remain small for long, and by the late 1880s into the 1890s and 1900s, cable cars on the Market Street Railway began getting bigger and bigger. Despite being only single ended and depending on turntables at the Ferry Building, the cars of the Haight Street and Cliff House, Park, & Ferries lines of the MSR ended up being the largest single-ended cable cars built in the city with an easy capacity of 130 people, double that of a Powell car with a crush capacity of 60 people. Unlike the narrow "cape" gauge of the Powell Lines, these giant cars were the only ones in San Francisco built to standard gauge.

A nice 3/4 view of a standard Market Street cable car, easily dwarfing its gripman and conductor.
(OpenSFHistory)

A "Breezer" Cable Car on the URR stops over in
the Castro District, August 24, 1916.
(SFMTA Photo Archive)

Other cable cars were quite interesting beasts, especially once they were rebuilt by United Railways of San Francisco (URR) following the Great Earthquake. To capitalize on lucrative summer days, a series of "breezer" cars were rebuilt from extant Castro and Sacramento-Clay cars into enormous side-bench open cars, still featuring the same elaborate wrought scrollwork found on the Powell cars above. These were eventually rebuilt in 1927 into more-utilitarian cable cars, but they certainly never lost their style one bit. As the system modernized into the 1930s and MSR was absorbed into the Muni, both the California Street Railway shops and the old Ferries & Cliff House shops at Washington & Mason continued to build and rebuild their respective cable cars into the modern day, meaning some of those cable cars from the 1880s still ply the San Francisco hills with nary a care as to the passage of time.

Electrified Cable Cars

Electrified MSR cars by the Hammond Car Company sit waiting at the old Ferry Terminal, 1900.
(Market Street Railway)

A perfect Market Street Railway "Dinky" crosses its
eponymous street as a cable car clears the intersection.
(Market Street Railway)

Some cable cars, however, soon fell into the new revolution of electrified streetcars. Despite the pushback from both the rich nobs and the city council, plenty of local carbuilders like John L. Hammond quickly switched to electric streetcar construction once the technology was available. The first generation of these cars were highly slap-dash, often amounting to placing existing "California Car" or "Powell Car" bodies on incredibly tall trucks and giving them a very unstable-looking profile. These cars were also incredibly small and incredibly bouncy as well, leading to the popular nickname of "Dinky" or "Dinkies". Though they still featured a modern (for the time) control stand and traction motors, brakes were still largely thrown by hand-lever with pine blocks on the rails applying stopping power instead of iron shoes to steel wheel. Though being highly slapdash, these cars formed the backbone of San Francisco's mass-transit fleet until 1912 and many were eventually turned into work-cars once newer, bigger, and more purpose-built cars were available.

  

The Monsters Are Due on Market Street

Muni A-Type No. 1 in preservation charter service
with the Market Street Railway, November 2, 2013.
(CaliforniaRailfan101)

With the advent of the San Francisco Muni as the first publicly-owned streetcar system in the United States, it was expected that their fleet would be the most modern that the country could deliver. Dubbed the "Arnold" or "A-Type" cars after Muni's usual consultant, Bion J. Arnold, the class was made up of 10 cars, each costing $7,700 ($206,015 in 2021) and were heavily inspired by the "California Car" designs on the Market Street Railway and the eponymous California Street Cable Railway (or Cal Cable). However, unlike those cars, the A-Types featured enclosed sides and, eventually, windows on their open sections due to the cold sea breeze and fog that would sometimes invade the cars. Their incredibly svelte width of 8'6" meant their entire interior was made up of longitudinal bench seats, but this also meant they could easily swing themselves around tight curves and city streets. Just like the cars above, the A-Types were also contracted locally as they were built by the W.L. Holman Company of San Francisco in 1912. Two years after the first A-Types were placed on Geary Street service, however, Holman went under.

MUNI "Iron Monster" No. 130 cruises past the Ferry Terminal and
an errant Boat Boi No. 233 on the preserved F Market & Wharves line.
The blue-and-yellow scheme was specifically made for the 1915 Exposition.
(James Belmont)

The initial A-Types worked Muni's systems alone until 1914, when the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition forced the streetcar company to bolster its fleet of cars to meet the growing demand of tourists that would soon flock to the city. With Holman gone, Muni finally turned to its first non-local carbuilder in the form of the Jewett Car Company of Jewett, Ohio. (We've previously talked about Jewett before, as they built the Pacific Electric 1000-class interurban cars.) An enormous order of 125 steel cars were placed to Jewett in 1913 and the first of these cars were delivered in 1914 to supplement (and eventually replace) the A-Types. Their steel construction and enormous size caused quite a stir to San Franciscans from Chinatown to Castro, earning them the nickname "Iron Monsters". They also proved quite handy when the Twin Peaks Tunnel opened in 1918, as their four Westinghouse 532A motors handled the climb out of the East Portal and their immense capacity made them competitively viable against the MSR down Market Street's "Roar of the Four".

Dinky No. 327 works a service on the F Stockton line,
which suited its low-capacity, low-intensity service niche.
Sadly, none are preserved.
(Market Street Railway)

Muni even invested in small cars to replace some of their older "Dinky" cars from their constituent lines starting in 1922. Due to the tight tolerances and steep grades of the E Union line from Van Ness Avenue to the Presidio, as it was originally a horsecar, then a cable car line, the new steel J-Type "Dinkies" had to be much shorter than a standard streetcar (about 18 feet shorter than the Iron Monsters) and yet strong. Equivalent to a center-entrance Birney Car, the new "Dinkies" spent their working life on the E Union wandering between Van Ness and the Presidio for many years. Interestingly, despite the Muni having no connection to the prominent Huntington family after 1900, the J-Type cars possessed the same five-window design that was popular in Los Angeles and Fresno as the "Huntington Standard" window design. Perhaps it was just a coincidence, especially since these cars were built at the American Car Company in St. Louis in 1922. 

 

On the Pulse of Market Street

MSR "PAYE" cars and 201-class cars crowd the loop
at the Ferry Building during the 1915 Panama-Pacific
Exhibition, carrying tons of fairgoers.
(BAERA Archives, WRM)

Despite having a fleet smaller than the Muni, the streetcars of the Market Street Railway were certainly no pushover either. They were never afraid to look outside San Francisco, with their first big purchase of 1911 Jewett cars (Nos. 101-180) being the first "Pay As You Enter" (or PAYE) cars in San Francisco, eliminating the need for a wandering conductor up and down the car. Unlike the "Monsters" it competed with, these cars were fully-enclosed standard designs with the only open sections being the car's end-entrances/exits. Their follow-up, Nos. 201-265, arrived from the American Car Company of St. Louis, Missouri, in 1913 and were more-or-less MSR's response to the Iron Monster with the same enclosed "open" sections and two bulkheads separating the "closed" section. These cars were, however, significantly shorter in length and in height compared to the Iron Monsters but nonetheless eye catching, especially with the later "Zip Stripe" applied to the sides.

MSR No. 2002 when first outshopped in 1925
It was later renumbered to MSR No. 300.
(Market Street Railway)

Such was MSR's pride in their own streetcar fleet compared to Muni that they eventually went out and built their own between June 1920 and December 1933. From their Elkton heavy repair shops at Ocean and San Jose Avenue, the MSR churned out 257 "California Comfort Cars" to bolster their fleet numbers. The basis for the cars were simple, as the wooden bodies were built by the shops while the electrics like motors and controllers were recycled from other scrapped cars. It got to the point where MSR was churning out two cars a month. Nos. 266-305 and Nos. 778-994 all entered service with an inside-bulkhead decal reading "This car is a San Francisco product built in the shops of the Market Street Railway Company" and their quality certainly showed as they remained hardy stalwarts of the fleet, even debuting the "Zip Stripe" livery in 1939 and going through an intense program of one-man/two-man conversion beginning in 1932. Interestingly, in the middle of that one-man-two-man rebuilt, the MSR also had ideas of making their own streamlined streetcar with two ends that could replace its aging fleet by the late 1930s, but fate eventually turned against it in 1944 when it was bought outright by the Muni.

Zip-Zappity! MSR No. 979 on the "31" line serving the Ferries
and Balboa Street, showing off its swanky new livery from 1939.
This car was also outfitted with a higher gear ratio and 50HP motors
to serve the "Balboa High Speed Line".
(Bob Townley)

   

Yes, They Had PCCs Too

At the West Portal of the Twin Peaks tunnel, "Iron Monster" No. 150
meets "Magic Carpet" No. 1001 on a balmy day in 1949.
(Market Street Railway)

Interior of preserved "Magic Carpet" No. 1003, with a
telltale hand-controlled regulator near the car's end.
(Rapid Transit Press)

By now, you must be sick of us talking about the PCCs all the time on this blog, but to be honest if they weren't so revolutionary and numerous, we might not be talking about them at all! When the first PCCs were outshopped by the Pullman Company of Chicago, Illinois, and St. Louis Car Company of St. Louis, Missouri, in 1938, the MUNI expressed interest in this revolutionary car despite not being in the Presidents Conference Committee that named the new car. Ordered in time for the 1939 San Francisco World's Fair on Treasure Island, five of these "C-Type" cars (Nos. 1001-1005) were delivered by St. Louis Car with some wild differences from the standard PCC. Instead of one end with a center exit, the car possessed two end-entrances on either side that more resembled the Iron Monsters they were planned to replace, with a two-man crew. In order to get around an SF city charter that prohibited city money for paying for patent royalties (specifically for the pedal system on the PCCs to the Presidents Conference Committee), the C-Types became the only PCCs ever to feature hand controls in place of foot controls. Due to their smooth running during the fare, the public named the five cars "Magic Carpets". After the repeal of the "two-man crew" ordinance in 1954, the cars were merely relegated to rush-hour service as the hand controls impeded fare collection.

Muni "Big Ten" No. 1015 exits the Twin Peaks Tunnel
on an outbound L Taraval service, August 24, 1967.
(Roger Puta, Marty Bernard)

After World War II, Muni invested in more PCCs that were much more traditional in design. Nos. 1006-1015 were built by St. Louis Car in 1948 and heavily based on the third-generation, all-electric PCCs, but lacked the standee windows or the single-end common to the type. Instead, these cars featured the same double-ended construction with end-entrances and were primarily used on the B Geary and N Judah lines despite both having loops already. Due to their immense size (50'5" long, 9' wide), they were known as "Big Tens", replacing their original moniker of "Torpedoes" due to their streamlined shape. These cars also premiered the "Wings" livery in 1948, which was eventually applied to all buses and streetcars on Muni by 1950, including the elderly Iron Monsters. It is unknown why Muni insisted on double-ended PCCs operating on lines with capable loops, but eventually these cars were converted in the mid-1950s to be "single-ended" by blocking off the doors on one end. Seemed easy enough.

MUNI "Baby Ten" No. 1040 at the crest of the J Church Line
where its private right of way through Dolores Heights ends.
(Marty Bernard)

When Muni went back to St. Louis Car for more "Big Tens", the market had turned against streetcars and there wasn't much economical interest in creating bespoke streetcars anymore. Thus, the "Baby Tens" (Nos. 1016-1040) entered service on the five remaining Muni streetcar lines (J Church, K Ingleside, L Taraval, M Ocean View, and N Judah) as the last PCC cars built in North America, with No. 1040 closing out the ranks. When built, the PCCs were still two-man cars with a a conductor's station towards the rear "entrance" of the car and the big end-doors functioning as an exit. This later changed in 1954 when the cars were finally rebuilt as "one-man" cars as they should have been. Other than that, they were just factory-standard "all-electric" PCCs. Due to their resilience and San Francisco's dependence on them, the Muni Baby Tens continued working up into the 1990s, being clad in new MUNI corporate liveries through 1982

  

Light Rail Looms Over the Bay

The ever-abominable Boeing-Vertol train, the first of
Muni's many modern mass transit malarkeys.
(Craig Walker)

When you have something as good as Muni's PCC car fleet, how can you improve upon them? Well, according to both the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (better known as the MBTA) and Muni, you turn to an aircraft manufacturer. Boeing-Vertol had, by everyone's admission, no experience making light rail vehicles but that didn't stop them from constructing the US Standard Light Rail Vehicle in 1976, better known by their manufacturer name. Designed to be a modern replacement for the PCC car and to boost light rail revivals all over the country, the first 100 Boeing-Vertol cars hit Muni rails in 1978 to open the new Muni Metro alongside the PCCs they were due to replace. Unfortunately, despite constant testing the cars were absolutely abominable with MBTA forcing Boeing to not only pay $40 million in damages ($179 billion today) but also make over 80 modifications to fix the cars. In San Francisco, the Muni Boeing-Vertols averaged about 600 miles between breakdowns and could only supply 66-72 cars out of the 100-car order for rush hour service. When the first Breda LRV2s entered service in 1996, the Boeing-Vertols weren't missed. 

Preserved "Big Ten" No. 1007 is dressed in contemporary
Muni colors as it welcomes the new Breda cars in 1996.
(Bill Hough)

"Long Load" is right, as the first of many Breda LRV2s
are delivered to Pier 80 for final outfitting, January 12, 1995.
(SFMTA)

However, before you think the Bredas were any better, you'd be... well, wrong. In the midst of the Muni Meltdown of 1998, the Breda LRV2s were widely considered not much better than the Boeing Vertols. Despite costing about $2 million per unit (or $3.2 million in 2021), the Bredas were known for being quite heavy (about 80,000lbs) and quite loud when going around corners, starting, and stopping. Unlike the Boeing-Vertols, they also had trouble coupling up as a train due to faulty couplers which led to reduced train capacity and injurious downtimes. Even with minor fixes to aid in the constant breakdowns and vibration issues, the 151 Bredas only managed a staggering 617 miles of running between breakdowns over the Boeing-Vertols by 2011. A new batch of LRV-3s were ordered in 1999 with much of the same problems as before, but now with just more of them. Despite these issues, the Bredas continue to make up much of the Muni fleet's backbone.

The new LRV4 descends into Dolores Park on the 
J Church Line, 2018.
(SFMTA)

That is, until 2017 when experienced light rail manufacturers Siemens helped Muni to right the wrongs of both the Boeing-Vertols and the Breda cars. Dubbed the S200 SF, the new "LRV4s" were first ordered in 2017 from Siemens after an intense pre-qualification period involving makers CAF, Kawasaki, and Siemens. Under Siemens, Muni made sure to buy enough cars to handle any potential major downtime (260 cars in three phases compared to 151 Bredas and 100 Boeing-Vertols), made sure to keep their hands off Siemens' designs (as it was imagined Muni's heavy involvement in making the Bredas geared for them killed any adaptability), and incredibly lax reliability requirements. The new Siemens cars debuted on the J Church line on November 17, 2017 to rapturous fanfare (relative to the last three LRV classes) as they were much more reliable with a mean breakdown distance of 5,000-17,000 miles from 2017 to 2020. 

"Where do you stand on sitting?" posits Muni as
two shop crewman look over the seats in an LRV4.
(SFMTA)

However, from the passenger side, the cars still had plenty of issues to work through like in April 12, 2019, when a passenger accidentally got her hand trapped in a door due to a faulty sensor and was dragged by the train a short distance before falling over and being knocked unconscious (she survived, and Muni was badly rattled by this). Despite this, and other issues like prematurely-wearing track brakes, some defective couplers that resulted in trains splitting apart while in motion, and longitudinal seats lacking "butt dents" causing riders to slide when the trains were in motion, the LRV4s proved to be a right step towards advancing light rail in the City by the Bay. Say what one will about the "Transit First" plan, but for this motorman I feel like the Siemens S200 SF is a "good enough" streetcar. 

Work Motors

MUNI C1 poses handsomely at Muni Metro East Division on May 26, 2009.
(Michael Strauch)

Muni C-1 in her guise as "The Contraption", testing out
 subway clearances on the J Church Line on April 12, 1992.
(Peter Erlich)

One last thing worth mentioning are Muni's non-revenue work motors, some of which date to the system's earliest periods. The eldest is "Motor Flat" No. C-1, also the most celebrated work car on the Muni system. Originally built in 1916, the tall motor-flat served as a track car, an overhead line car, a ballast trolley, and even a weed-sprayer at one point. Despite being treated like a working animal most of her life, C-1 maintained a presence in the background until early 1992, when Muni pulled her out of retirement in the Western Railway Museum of Rio Vista, CA to test out the clearances of the incoming Breda LRV2s through the Muni Metro tunnels. After her service in that, No. C-1 was restored by Muni, Market Street Railway (the historical foundation), and Breda in time for Muni's 80th birthday in December 1992. After this event, C-1 was later fitted with a generator to be able to let it operate off the wire and it continues in occasional service as Muni's track and switch service motor. 

MUNI No. 1008 as the "Muni Repair Car", prior
to her 2012 rehabilitation back into passenger service.
(Don Ross)

Beyond the C-1, Muni rostered plenty of specialty cars such as Differential Car Co. No. 0929, a Market Street side-dump car that was used for ballast and parts movement, but most of their fleet was actually made up of older Muni and MSR cars. One of these cars was Sand Car No. 0601, originally Market Street Railway No. 578. Thanks to it being saved for work service, the diminutive "Dinky" was able to be restored into its as-built form in 1956 after it was retired from work service. "Iron Monster" No. 130 was also saved this way, as a sympathetic shop foreman named Charlie Smallwood converted the car into the Geneva Carhouse wrecker for another 25 years of service in 1958. Even PCCs were not exempt from this, as "Big Ten" No. 1008 was used as a wrecker for the Muni Metro from 1982 to 2012, complete with gaining a modern pantograph. It seemed, then, that thanks to plenty of sympathetic shop workers and the longevity of shop work on Muni, if you could be repurposed, you were saved.

Preserved Examples

Muni No. 1008 poses with Breda car 15318 as the 
elderly PCC is working as a "Training Car", August 4, 2012.
(MuniDave)

Muni Nos. 1003 and 178 chill in preservation at 
the Western Railway Museum in Rio Vista, CA.
(Muni Dave)

Most of San Francisco's surviving cars today are operated by the Market Street Railway, a non-profit named in tribute for the original MSR, that seeks to help educate the public and preserve the remaining MSR and Muni fleet. Of their collection, fourteen are original Muni or Market Street cars and I'll be discussing them, and the rest of their fleet, in a separate episode for another time. The Western Railway Museum of Rio Vista, CA, also has a large San Franciscan fleet, including "Magic Carpet" No. 1003, Muni "Baby Ten" No. 1016, an all-electric PCC that Muni bought from St. Louis Public Service Company as No. 1153, and Presidio and Ferries No. 28, an 1895 J.S. Hammond product built for the first Market Street Railway and eventually rebuilt as Muni work car No. C-4. Outside of the Bay Area, Muni "Iron Monster" No. 171 has found a new home at the Southern California Railway Museum in Perris, California. It was originally joined by St. Louis "Baby Ten" PCC Nos. 1033 and 1039 (which has since returned to Muni), along with "Iron Monster" No. 162, which was sold to the SCRM in 1958 along with No. 171. Due to the shallow rail profile used on the Muni, the SCRM has declined to return No. 171 to service as its shallow flanges make it difficult to operate over switches and crossovers. 

Muni No. 171 gets some rare sunshine during one of the
SCRM's formerly-annual Streetcar Festival.
(SCRM)

  

Thank you for reading today's Trolley post, and watch your step as you alight on the platform. My resources today included the archives of the San Francisco Cable Car Museum, the SFMTA Photo Archives, and the Market Street Railway. The trolley gifs in our posts are made by myself and can be found under “Motorman Reymond’s Railroad Gif Carhouse”, while the two LRV gifs are courtesy of Alex Stroshane. On Thursday, we look at the saga of the Cable Car Lady and the preserved cable cars of San Francisco. For now, you can follow myself or my editor on Twitter, buy a shirt or sticker from our Redbubble stand, or purchase my editor's self-developed board game! It's like Ticket to Ride, but cooler! (and you get to support him through it!) Until next time, ride safe!