Cable car machinery photos
Wired's got a nice photo-gallery of the 135-year-old San Francisco cable-car system, which is such a bizarre rube-goldberg-device (constantly moving subterranean cables!).
Cable Cars Still Humming on 19th-Century Tech
Cable cars faced extinction and persevered again in 1947, when San Francisco Mayor Roger Lapham proclaimed that the lines should be removed in favor of buses. Thankfully, a campaign led by San Francisco's social elite saved the cars. Today, people come from all over the world to experience a ride on the tried-and-true cable cars, first tested 135 years ago today
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Awesome stuff! Anyone know if any similar systems exist around the world, or is the S.F. system unique to S.F.?
#2, we used to have them in Melbourne, Australia until they were electrified in the 1940s. More information here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_car_(railway)#Cities_currently_operating_cable_cars
Regards,
Andrew
All these pix need is some mysterious radioactive fog, Forrest Tucker and Janet Munro, and a giant, one-eyed, large-brained, multi-tentacled, head eating alien.
Anyone can go and see the big wheels for free at the Cable Car Museum, which is inside the building that houses all the machinery. But bring earplugs: those suckers are LOUD!
@jack:yes, the SF system is unique.
A small caveat about the saving of the cable cars: although the three most scenic cable car lines were saved, the vast majority of cable car lines WERE in fact removed and replaced with buses. The 3 existing lines service the most touristy parts of town, and for the most part the riders are tourists who get on at the end of the line and ride them the whole way out and back for entertainment. If you have some out of town guests, you can't beat it, three bucks for a nice ride. But they're nearly useless as public transportation. Most SF locals have never ridden one.
Cable cars used to be a lot more common; the trams in Melbourne, Australia (which is considerably less hilly than San Francisco) were originally cable cars, though were replaced with electric trams around the 1900s. I think other (now tramless) Australian cities may have had cable cars in the Victorian era as well.
Modern, high-tech cable cars continue to be built and installed in specialty applications. The passenger trams at Minneapolis-St. Paul and Detroit-Wayne County airports are two nice examples.
Bookyloo: It's $5 per ride, one way. I was at the museum last weekend and took the cable car to the Ferry Station for lunch. It cost $10/person. It's $11 for a ride all day pass.
Jack: IIRC from my visit to the museum,this is the last operating cable car system in the world.
The Cable Car motor house / museum is one of the places I always encourage visitors to see when they come to visit, and I always love going with them. I never tire of that place.
Actually, the Wellington Cable Car line is still running according to wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wellington_Cable_Car
Most SF locals have never ridden one.
I don't think that I ever rode one in 23 years in SF.
I've never ridden one, after ten-plus years here. I always feel a little embarrassed when I'm stuck on a corner and a cable car lurches in front of me. It's like going to Paris and wearing a beret with the Eiffel Tower embroidered on it. In public. While eating brie and chatting with an old French whore.
I'm glad they saved their system, here in Minneapolis, they got rid of them in favor of buses. Now, there is effectively no public transit here.
I have only ridden the California line. For one thing, it's much easier to get a seat on (no lines) and it actually goes to places I find useful. Plus, you can use your Fast Pass on the Cable Cars (unless that's changed recently) since a lot of folks in Chinatown still use the Cable Car on California street for genuine day-to-day public transit.
Speaking of long gone systems, my grandfather passed away about a year ago at the age of 92, and back in the 30s and 40s he was a streetcar driver in Birmingham, Alabama. (He was the president of the local union, in fact.) Now, if you've ever been there you would scratch your head at the idea of street cars there, but in the late 19th and early to mid 20th century it had an enormous public transit systems comprised of street cars. While I was home recently, my mother gave me a book that my grandmother had put in the trash. It was published in 1976 and it is clearly a lovingly handmade publication of streetcar photos, transit maps, rolling stock inventory photos, etc. of the entire system of Birmingham. It was both thrilling to read through and also devastatingly sad. The fact that San Francisco has not ONLY their cable cars but the historic street car lines is one of the few things I love without reservation about the city (I love lots about SF, but I have a lot of reservations about it too). Frankly, stereotypical or not, I use the street cars and the cable cars when they are the most convenient way for me to get where I need to go.
It's weird not riding the CCs. I rode them a lot in the 60s. Once a few days after a CC crash with injuries, I bailed out of one winching up Russian Hill (?) when it slipped a gear and started sliding back down. At the bottom it settled itself on the track and climbed back up to where I was standing. LOLs at Buddy. Life was ne'er sweeter than to be young and laughed at in San Francisco.
Maybe it was . . . fifty cents?