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

Tue Feb 2 09:41:02 EST 2010

Around 1888 a national transit convention debated "the battle of the cables" (cable car -vs- trolley car)  By the following year the trolley car had 'won'.  As Fred says, an incredible about of money was poured into cable construction on the eve of the development of the trolley/streetcar.  

Some could also argue that, a decade later, a lot of money was being poured into questionable street railway development on the eve of the development of mass produced, relatively cheap autos.    

Times haven't changed.  How about money poured into internet stocks late 1990s or the more recent housing bubble.  

Just a viewpoint

Cheers

John

> From: fwschneider at comcast.net
> Subject: [PRCo] Re: Fwd: Amazing 1906 Cable Car Movie Taken prior to Earthquake
> Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2010 21:25:29 -0500
> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
> 
> 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.
> >
> 
> 

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