Passenger Trains > Cable Car Carpenters

Interesting article on SFGate this morning about the carpenters that work on the Cable Cars in San Francisco. I learned something new, I thought the work was done at the cable car barn. The carpentry work is done in the Dogpatch neighborhood, so the cars get a truck ride over.

http://m.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/The-fine-art-of-keeping-a-cable-car-on-track-9235277.php

Nathan

Posted from iPhone

Up until the mid-70s, cable cars were built in Elkton Shops, near the present BART Balboa Park station.  The shops were hastily constructed by United Railroad after the 1906 earthquake, and survived for over 60 years.  In later years words like "ramshackle" were often applied to them.  The Carpenter Shop was in the northeast corner of the main shop building.

1)  August 1973--when I took my daughters up to The City to see the Cable Car Centennial.  I got permission for them to join me on a visit to Elkton Shops, where we found the underframe of a new cable car, one of the last to be  built before the Carpenter Shop moved to the present location.

2)  About a year later, Galen Sarno sent me this photo, presumably the nearly completed car.

3)  Rainbow the Cable Car Cat.  When the shop was relocated, one of the workers took her home to become a housecat.

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