[PRCo] Re: Fwd: Amazing 1906 Cable Car Movie Taken prior to Earthquake

[Schneider Fred]

I think that a lot of the original routes might have initially been  
converted to electricity in a spartan manner simply by hanging wire  
and running cars and that as time progressed, the tore out the rails,  
filled the street and redid the entire infrastructure.   Holland  
might be the one to ask but he isn't on this list any longer.   Most  
of the old time historians in the Bay Area like those here in the  
east are dead ... the ones who knew it all.   My copies of Charlie  
Smallwood's Market Street Railway book are at PTM so I cannot  
research what Smallwood said about it there.

I still have George Hilton's cable car book here.  I will try to  
summarize what he said ...

Please do not harpoon me if I forget something significant.   This is  
not my area of expertise.

The most important thing is that the cables opened before electric  
traction was possible with one exception.   Sutro should have known  
better.   He built his after Sprague proved that trolleys worked in  
Richmond.   Cables were incredibly costly.   Their only advantage in  
the world of the 1870s was they didn't wear out on San Francisco's  
(or Seattle's or Pittsburgh's) hills like a horse or a mule did.    
But can you imagine the friction involved in dragging a wire rope  
from East Liberty to downtown Pittsburgh?   I don't care how much oil  
you throw on those pulleys,  you are going to spend a fortune for  
coal just to overcome that friction.   And imagine the cost of  
digging up the street down three feet and installing cast iron yokes  
every six feet or so just to hold the rails and all those pulleys?

Clay Street Hill Railroad (Clay from Kearny to Van Ness) was opened  
in 1873 and abandoned in 1891.

Sutter Street Railway operated Sutter Street from Market to Presidio  
Avenue and a second line from Divisadero via Pacific, Polk, Geary,  
Larkin and 9th (on the south side of Market Street to Brannon).   The  
entire system became part of the Market Street Cable Railroad in 1902  
and was destroyed in the 1906 quake.   However, because of opposition  
of the residents to overhead wires, the Pacific Avenue section from  
Polk to Divisadero (12,000 feet) was rebuilt after the quake and ran  
until 1929.   Renewed operation on Pacific even required building a  
new power house to placate the residents.

California Street Cable Railroad:  California from Market to  
Presidio; Hyde from Beach to Pine, Pine from Hyde to Jones; Jones  
from Pine to Market and O'Farrell from Jones to Grant.   Opened 1877,  
closed 1906.   Rebuilding finished 1908.   Ran until 1954 when Lloyds  
of London canceled its insurance because the courts held the railroad  
responsible because a truck backed into a cable car and injured a  
passenger.   Muni took over and rebuilt what they wanted.    
California from Market to only Van Ness runs.   Hyde was merged with  
the Powel and Mason line.

Geary St. Park and Ocean Railroad:   From Kearny St. and Market west  
on Geary Street to 5th Avenue and South to Fulton St. -- undamaged in  
quake -- 1880 to 1912.   This became the Muni B and C trolley  
lines.   It may have been the first municipal operation in the United  
States.  It appears that the company showed limited interest in  
continuing running because the city was going to tax them to death.

Presidio & Ferries Railroad: Montgomery, Union, Baker and Lombard  
Streets from the end of the Washington Jackson line to the  
Presidio.   Ran from 1880 until 1905.   The power plant totally  
collapsed in the earthquake.   It converted to electric railway but  
sold that to Muni in 1913.

Market Street Cable Railway.   This was the colossus with 195,675  
feet (37.05 miles) of cable.  It is what you saw in the film clip.    
It ran from the Ferry building via Market Street and Castro St. to  
26th and Castro.    There was another branch south on Valencia from  
Market to Mission (over 4 miles).   There was a line west from Market  
on Haight Street to Golden Gate Park (about 3.8 miles).   Another on  
Hayes Street to the same park (4.4 miles).   One on McAllister Street  
and Fulton from Market to 12th (about 7.5 miles).   And there was the  
affiliated Ferries and Cliff House Railroad on 6th, Lake and  
Sacramento Streets.     After 1906 the only part of this empire  
rebuilt was the Castro Street cable which ran until diesel buses  
replaced it in 1941.

Ferries and Cliff House Railroad:  This was another huge system with  
16 miles of cable.   Because of its huge construction debt, it hoped  
to find an escape by merging into the Market Street Cable Railroad,  
then owned by the Southern Pacific.   We know this was later Standard  
Shares, same as Pittsburgh Railways.   F&CH was in Market Street by  
1893.   It was the nucleus of much of what is running today but a lot  
was also abandoned.   The system started at the Ferry Building and  
ran west on Sacramento and Clay Streets.   There was also track on  
Washington and Jackson streets west of Powell and Mason.   They owned  
the track on Powell and Mason that runs today.   F&CH approached  
Golden Gate Park from the north via California, Lake and 6th  
Streets.  After 1906 it wasn't rocket science to understand you  
didn't rebuild if you didn't have to.  Only steepest lines  
remained ... Powell and Mason, Clay and Sacramento from the Ferry  
Building to Fillmore, Powell and Mason.    The Sacramento and Clay  
line quit in 1942 because of the shift of the Key System / Interurban  
Electric services from ferries to the Bay Bridge ... no one was  
riding the cables from the Ferry Building.   The Washington and  
Jackson line was curtailed in 1956 as a budget cutting move.   That  
was when the California Street and the remaining Market Street lines  
were merged.

Omnibus Railroad and Cable Company was owned by Gustav Sutro.   This  
was the second largest system in the city with 22 miles of track but  
its owner was sort of like a bird flying north for winter.  He did  
everything wrong.   He built on the wrong streets, went in the wrong  
directions, used the wrong track gauge ... he didn't last to see the  
earthquake.   He built his system in 1889 and everything was gone  
within ten years.


On the subject of films:  I would suggest that if Transit Gloria  
Mundi released it, perhaps Carl Schultz found it in the Library of  
Congress archives.   Remember that the early movies were copyrighted  
by putting a paper print of every single frame on file in the LofC.    
By now that stuff is in the public domain.   That is where Carl found  
the pictures of the first (1904) New York subway train.   If you want  
to ask him personally, I could handle a controlled dissemination of  
Carl's e-mail address Ken ... but not to everyone.




On Feb 1, 2010, at 4:55 PM, Derrick Brashear wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 4:46 PM, Ken and Tracie
> <ktjosephson at embarqmail.com> wrote:
>> I have wondered if the San Francisco cable car rails were heavy  
>> enough to
>> handle the heavier, faster electric cars? Does anybody know if the  
>> cable
>> rails lasted well into the traction era, or if they were  
>> systematically
>> replaced over the span of a few years or several decades.
>>
>> I have that reel on VHS, from Interurban Press. I don't know what  
>> happened
>> to their source after Ira passed away. Maybe TGM will re-release  
>> it on disk
>> someday. TGM used part of that film in one of their videos.
>>
>> I have the Boston film, too, as well as a portion of an early P.E.  
>> training
>> film.
>>
>> Fred, you should find that "Dallas' Greatest Hits" video which  
>> shows many
>> present day motorists are not any better at driving than their  
>> ancestors
>> were.
>>
>> BTW, I found some Paul Weyrich slides of a fantrip or  
>> demonstration run of
>> PCC 4000. Car 1713, in Steelers' colors showed up a lot, so maybe  
>> it was a
>> two car trip. The slides are dated 1981.
>>
>> He also has a lot of duplicate slides from long ago sources, as  
>> well as some
>> of his own. Lots of great Pittsburgh, Philly, Johnstown, Laurel  
>> Line stuff.
>>
>> A photo study of Sky Bus is also well represented. As some of you  
>> know, my
>> oldest brother used to call the Sky Bus cars "suitcases on wheels."
>
> Someday I should finish my HO scale model of Skybus; It's built of
> cardstock, is to scale, and is designed to have a slot car chassis
> installed into it so it can operate.
>
> I got the body done, in like 1992. I still have the body and  
> nothing else.
>