SFist: SFist Photo: Muni's F-Market Line - Steel is Real

Rick Laubscher

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 13:48:31 -0800

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.

DTD

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 04:40:36 -0800

Couldn't it be both? I thought many Muni employees volunteered their time for the rail car restoration.

Austin

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 02:28:52 -0800

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.