| Posted by Bill Choisser on February 10, 2007 | |
PCC streetcars are seen daily on that stretch of track now, of course. They are the refurbished PCCs used for historical (F-line) trolley service, and they are in great shape, not like that car in the picture, which at the time was surely not well-maintained because it was seen as soon to be forever retired from service. This trackage is not on the F-line, but it is used to get its cars to and from the barn.
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Up until September 19th of 1982, weekend service on the five MUNI streetcar lines was still provided by the rather battered fleet of PCC's. There were three groups. The so called "Big Tens", 1006 thru 1015, which were built in 1948 as double enders and later converted to single end. The "Baby Tens", 1016 thru 1040, single enders which were the last group of PCC's built in the United States. This group had been originally built for two man operation with a conductors station at the rear doors. The third group, the 1100's, 1101 thur 1170, had been aquired by the MUNI in the mid-50's from the City of St. Louis, they were slightly bigger than the "baby tens". The 1100's brought an end to the last of the two-man heavy weight cars. The MUNI's first five "streamliners" were non-standard cars which looked like PCC's but had many differences to get around SF's prohibition, at the time, of paying royalties. They also aquired a group of PCC's from Toronto to supplement their own cars during BART construction. These cars were not suited to MUNI's terrain and lasted only a short time. Thus, on September 19th, it appeared PCC's had run their last mile.
The following summer of 1983, with the cable cars shut down, the City started the "Trolley Festival" which over the years evolved to the historic operation now seen on Market St. and the Embarcadero. If, on September 19th of '82, you had told me there would still be PCC's in operation in SF in 2007, I would have laughed.
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