Car 52
A single frame from the San Francisco Collection.
A century of history on a cable
Cable Car 52 sits on the tracks at California and Drumm, framed straight down the rail toward Van Ness.
San Francisco's cable cars go back to 1873, when Andrew Hallidie tested the first one on Clay Street after watching horses struggle to pull streetcars up the city's steep, wet hills. His father had patented wire rope cable in Britain, and Hallidie built a system around it that could pull a car uphill without a horse in sight.
The California Street line, the one Car 52 runs today, opened in 1878 and is the oldest cable car line still in operation in the city, later extended out to Drumm Street, right about where this was shot. The system as a whole is a National Historic Landmark, and it's still run the same way it always has: no engine, no rails carrying current, just a car gripping a moving cable under the street.
Part of the San Francisco Collection.