San Francisco’s Cable Automotive Museum is greater than a vacationer entice
On a cool autumn morning on board the Powell-Mason Cable Car in San Francisco, operator Tsombe Wolfe is taking a break. We stop at the edge of an intersection, to the nearest cent.
I ask him how long he drives the car. “Two minutes,” he jokes before revealing that he has been with it for 16 years.
Most public transit experiences feel impersonal at best, but on a cable car, tourists and commuters alike converse with conductors who are also unofficial ambassadors for the city. This won’t be news to most long-time San Francisco residents – the average pre-pandemic ride number was 40,000 a day – but as a newcomer who hadn’t ridden it, I knew next to nothing about the cable car system.
Then I went to one of the most pleasant free museums in town.
Giant motorized wheels inside the San Francisco Cable Car Museum pull the large cables that allow cars to move through the city streets.
Charles Russo / SFGATE
The first thing you notice upon entering the Cable Car Museum in Nob Hill is the loud hum of the giant spindle pulleys known as “sheaves” that twist the ropes that pull the cars up and down the hills. This is not just a museum, but a fully functional powerhouse that acts as a hub for the entire railway line. Of course, there are historical exhibits and a gift shop – where you can actually buy old cables! – but this is not just a historical curiosity for tourists, it is a crucial piece of the urban infrastructure.
“I’ve heard a lot of people say: ‘Oh God, they’re a tourist trap, they’re expensive,’” says Museum Director Michael Phipps from the cable cars. A ride costs $ 8. “But it’s such a unique experience. The great thing about it is that you are part of the landscape, you don’t just move through it … you experience something that is only available here. “
Michael Phipps, director of the San Francisco Cable Car Museum, pictured at the entrance to the museum.
Charles Russo / SFGATE
San Francisco is the last city in the world with a functioning cable car system. And legend has it, it would not have existed if it hadn’t been for a rainy day in around 1869 when inventor Andrew Smith Hallidie saw a group of horses dragged to their death across the slippery cobblestones of Jackson Street. Hallidie devised a solution, partly inspired by his sympathy for horses as a founding member of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, but it could also have something to do with the wire rope factory he owned in North Point Street.
Four years later, San Francisco launched its cable car system. At its peak it was operated by eight companies and traveled as far west as Golden Gate Park and Inner Richmond and south to 28th St. in Mission. Since then, the system has shrunk significantly with just four lines, but don’t expect them to go away anytime soon. Thanks to the protection of city rights, they are an eternal part of the landscape.
A San Francisco cable car arrives at the top of the hill at the intersection of Powell and California on Thursday, December 9, 2021.
Charles Russo / SFGATE
“When you get in this car, you are not only traveling through space, but also through time,” says Phipps.
It also helps that they are still a relatively environmentally friendly way to get around the city.
“We won an award from NASA in the 1960s. We don’t use rubber, we don’t use gas. They are powered by electricity, so we don’t emit any pollutants into the atmosphere, ”explains Phipps, who later adds that the cars themselves are only powered by a small battery that powers the headlights.
Various exhibits in the San Francisco Cable Car Museum.
Charles Russo / SFGATE
The entrance to the left of the San Francisco Cable Car Museum and a trio of replica cable car models on display in the museum.
Charles Russo / SFGATE
Aside from curiosity to see an antique car from 1873, the real reason to visit the museum is for a glimpse into the heart of the city itself. Go down a few quick flights of stairs and through a series of glass windows and you can see the underground mechanisms that power the entire system, the spinning discs that look like giant clock gears that keep the cables running in and out of the power plant lead out. They slowly pull the cars up and down the streets of San Francisco, directing the traveling pieces of city history.
“We are one of the few national landmarks that are a moving landmark,” says Phipps.
It is an engineering achievement that can be viewed spectacularly on site and that also leaves a lasting impression in retrospect. The ornate cars that drive down California Street are one of the city’s most famous landmarks, but seeing what goes on under the tracks gives a much better sense of something that otherwise easily blends in with the busy cityscape.
“One of the foremen upstairs once said, ‘This cable is the heartbeat of the city,’” says Phipps. “People who don’t understand the cable cars simply don’t understand the city. They are inextricably linked. “
Two cable cars are idling in the cable car garage between Jackson and Washington in San Francisco.
Charles Russo / SFGATE
A selection of different cable cars that are installed for repair in the mechanic’s pit in the working cable car garage above the museum.
Charles Russo / SFGATE
