June 7, 2007
SFist Photo: Muni's F-Market Line - Steel is Real
See how the sparks fly down at the Pharr Yard in San Francisco when with a little steel meets up with an angle grinder. This dOOd rocks. To his left is the side of a Market Street Railway "California Comfort Car" from the 1920's. We're all about the comfort so we look forward to seeing old #798 back in action on Market. To all the hardworking people taking care of the F-Market cars: For all you do, this Bud's for you.
Update: You commenters are always so clever - this worker could be a volunteer, instead of a Muni employee as we had originally assumed. Thanks!
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Actually, I'm pretty sure 798 is under Market Street Railway's control, so that is probably a volunteer, not a Muni employee. MSRy usually takes care of restoration at Pharr, before a car is sent to the Geneva Barn for the final Muni fixings.
Couldn't it be both? I thought many Muni employees volunteered their time for the rail car restoration.
The gentleman in the picture is Bill Wong, who is indeed a Market Street Railway volunteer (I'm the pres of Mkt St Ry). Bill has devoted thousands of hours of his personal time to streetcar restoration. That car is really a treasure because it was built in 1924, in SF, by our namesake, Muni's old competitor, by (the old) Market Street Railway's employees, right on the site where Muni now stores and services the LRV fleet at Ocean and Geneva.
They hand-built 250 virtually identical streetcars like this, over a span of 10 years. This is the only one left. The body was a jewelry store in the Sierra when we rescued it in 1984. So you could call it a long-term project! But we'll be ready to send it over to Muni by the end of this year.