MUNI Market Street F-Market Line

"Torpedo" PCCs 1007 and 1010 holding down the F-Market line at Ferry Plaza. Photo by Peter Ehrlich.

In the 1970s, Muni was planning for the day when all of its streetcar services would be placed in the Market Street Subway being constructed by BART, and Market Street would be rid of its tracks forever. Meanwhile, the possibility of creating a historic Embarcadero trolley line, to be operated by the Western Railway Museum, Muni, or some other entity on tracks of the State Belt Railway, began to gather momentum.

Muni Metro opened on February 18, 1980. On that day, streetcars of the N-Judah line dove underground, while the four remaining lines stayed with PCCs. The next conversion, in June 1980, added service to West Portal, and the J-Church was the last fully PCC-operated route until its conversion on June 17, 1981 to Muni Metro subway service. Weekend PCCs, however, soldiered on until September 19, 1982, when the last cars were retired, sold off, stored or scrapped. But the tracks remained in place.

Enter the Trolley Festival era. With the city's famed cable car system shut down on September 21, 1982 for a complete rebuilding, representatives of the city Chamber of Commerce and historic streetcar support group Market Street Railway developed plans for a substitute attraction for the summer of 1983, and hit upon an international-flavor Historic Trolley Festival, using the now-idle tracks on Market Street. With the help of Mayor (now U. S. Senator) Dianne Feinstein and then-Muni General Manager Harold H. Geissenheimer, a dyed-in-the-wool railfan, plans developed quickly. Using Muni's own flagship trolley, 1912-vintage A-Type 1 and some PCCs as a nucleus, cars from Oporto, Portugal, Portland, Oregon, Melbourne, Australia and Blackpool, England, as well as a retired 1923 2-man San Francisco car, were leased or donated for use. Another Muni trolley, B-Type 130 (1914), was re-converted from a wrecker to a passenger car, and the 1983 Trolley Festival sprang to life. The success of the Festival resulted in continued weekend operations into 1984 and another summer. A tram from Milan, Italy was added for 1984, and Hamburg tram 3557, which made it late in 1983, now would have a full season under its belt. The Festival was repeated four more summers, and in the meantime, federal and state funding was lined up to rebuild the Market Street tracks for a new permanent surface Market Street line. Following four separate trackwork contracts, the F-Line opened for service on September 1, 1995. Ridership shot up 43% over the trolley coach line the F replaced. A new fleet of 14 ex-Philadelphia PCCs, plus 3 double-enders from Muni's mothballed fleet, provided service, supplemented whenever possible with a vintage car.

In the latter days of the 1987 Trolley Festival, two 4-wheel trolleys, running with diesel generators in tow, were utilized for a demonstration service on State Belt Railway tracks to test the feasibility of an Embarcadero vintage trolley service. The two cars, running Fridays and Saturdays only, carried record loads, proving without a doubt that such a service was indeed viable. Then came the Oct. 17, 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, which damaged the Embarcadero Freeway so severely that it had to be demolished. In its place came a new Embarcadero surface roadway with streetcar tracks in its median. As a result of the quake, the waterfront had opened up to San Franciscans again, and the revitalized Embarcadero was a new Grand Boulevard and a source of civic pride. Linking of the F-Line with the new tracks to Fisherman's Wharf occurred on March 4, 2000. 10 Milan cars joined the PCCs in regular service, and the 2-man vintage cars would now see everyday service.

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