Muni Streetcars

The garden railroading season has been underway for close to two months but I haven't had any new posts in ages. As I got a chance to ride on streetcars a couple weekends ago when I was in San Francisco, I thought I’d include a few pictures of some streetcars I saw, three PCCs and one Peter Witt. The streetcars are owned and operated by the San Francisco Municipal Railway, also known as Muni, which has one of the largest collections of operational streetcars in the world. Muni typically operates about 20 different streetcars from their historic fleet each day on two routes, the E-line and F-line. This map shows what cars are in operation right now.

Muni No. 1815

No. 1815 is a type of streetcar is known as a Peter Witt, named after the commissioner of the Cleveland Railway from 1911-1915. During his tenure he designed a new streetcar and built a prototype which was introduced in 1914. An initial order of 130 cars was delivered to Cleveland Railway in 1915 and 1916. This style of streetcar was adopted in many American cities and the design was exported around the world, and they were especially popular in some Italian cities.

About 500 Peter Witt streetcars were built for use in Milan, and many of those are still in operation in Milan today. Muni has acquired 11 cars from Milan; this particular one was built in 1928, acquired from Milan in 1998, and is painted in the style that has been in use in Milan since the 1970s.

More information on No. 1815 and the other Milan streetcars Muni owns can be found here.

Muni No. 1056

This car was built in 1948 by the St. Louis Car Co. for the Philadelphia Tracition Co. and acquired by Muni in 1992. It was restored in 1993 and again in 2013. Like many Muni streetcars, its livery doesn’t reflect its origins. Today it is painted in tribute to Kansas City, which ran PCC streetcars from 1941 to 1957. I talked a little bit about PCCs in a previous post when I acquired an AristoCraft PCC for the PE&A. While my PE&A is a pre-war style PCC, No. 1056 is a post-war style PCC.

More information on No. 1056 can be found here.

Muni No. 1070

This PCC was built in 1946 by the St. Louis Car Co. for the Twin City Rapid Transit Co. (Minneapolis/St. Paul) where it was in operation until 1953. It was one of about 30 PCCs sold in 1953 to New Jersey Transit in Newark, which continued to operate PCCs all the way up to 2001. The following year this car came to San Francisco for a test run and it was then one of 11 cars that were purchased from New Jersey Transit by Muni in 2004. The livery it sports today is the original 1950s style which it would have had when it first went into operation in New Jersey.

More information on No. 1070 can be found here.

Muni No. 1075

This is a sister car to 1070 and had an identical history. It is also one of the 11 cars Muni purchased from New Jersey Transit in 2004. Unlike 1070, this one has been painted to honor the Cleveland Transit System which ran PCCs from 1946 to 1953.

More information on No. 1075 can be found here.