1906 Streetcar ride in San Francisco

Trains Magazine Transit
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I’ve been waiting for someone to do this!

I was hoping the supposed date would be confirmed or corrected – I think some of the details are post-earthquake/fire.

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Thanks for posting this! I had not seen this Youtube site before. Very neat!

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This is the best version of this movie I’ve seen. Thanks for posting it. It makes one nostalgic for the days of the Barbary Coast.

So does this:

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Streetcars/Trams Bring back memories of visiting family in Leeds in the early 1950s. A form of transport I thought would never be removed.

Thanks for posting.

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Drivers were even more chaotic then than they are today. Making a U turn in the middle of a block with traffic both ways??? Peds crossing the street willy nilly. Street car crossing at grade. No directional lane integrity. No ‘traffic control’ at intersections. Horse drawn tracked car? Turn table at line end!

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That happens these days. See pedestrians walk across in front of moving vehicles (especially) in Outdoor Museums.

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When was the last time you drove near Chicago? :grin:

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2020 towed through the area with the race car going to and from Elkhart Lake, WI to race at Road America. Also towed to Road America in 2009 - 2010 - 2011 -2012 - 2013 - 2014.

In the 1980’s the boss and I would fly into O’Hare rent a car and go to our computer supplier’s plant in Deerfield three or four times a year.

As a kid between 1959 & 1963 I would go to Chicago on the Capitol Limited and circumnavigate the loop on foot hitting all the various railroad passenger stations. One time three of us went and used a CB&Q scoot to visit one of their relatives at Napierville.

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Last time I drove from Dallas to Milwaukee was able to avoid most of the suburban area of Chicago by driving North on I-39 and then headed NE after crossing the Wisconsin border…was faster.

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It looks like wagon wheels had the same trouble crossing rails in the street that my 1969 Ford had before I got radial tires.
All the piles of horse exhaust must have added an interesting aroma
Slow speed is the only thing that prevented the street from being a death zone.
Mark Vinski

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I’m pretty sure many of those people cutting in and out were fully aware that a movie was being made.

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Interesting point! And can you imagine the pollution problem if the 100 million cars in this country today were 100 million horses? And don’t forget the horseflies! :nauseated_face:

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Not to mention the scourge that was the Great Epizootic… imagine if this had been like H1N1.

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I remember seeing this or a similar one about 15 or 20 years ago, and it was stated that some of that traffic was staged. I looked at it again and noted that one car with license plate “4867” crossed right to left and back to right at 1:31, 2:35, 3:42, then at 5:26 drove in front from the right without crossing, each time going to the right and stopping or slowing down. At 5:51 it crossed right to left and off screen then at 6:06 returned left to right. It appeared again at 9:28 and 9:53, but by then I had given up making notes so I don’t remember what it was doing

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I remember seeing this posted on YT way back when. There’s a story about it somewhere how the film left the city with someone and shortly after the quake hit.

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Makes sense to me. That city looks awful tidy for one that had a major catastrophe. I’m certain it was filmed pre-earthquake.

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Is there some question about the date?

Not for me. At 4:51 note the old Palace Hotel on the south side of the street (behind the streetcar). At the time it was one of the best hotels in the country.

This film is a priceless document in a number of ways. And of course people knew they were being filmed–look at all that mugging for the camera.

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Which was covered in Middleton’s book The Time of the Trolley as an example of a reason that street railways wanted an alternative to horses. There were cases where men were hired to pull the horsecars.

The air pollution problem in L.A. was unhealthy, but almost certainly not as unhealthy if horses provided the motive power.

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It’s inconceivable that Los Angeles would have developed to its state of pollution if horses had been retained – they are not long-range motive power for either public or private ownership.

What ‘would have been’ would be even further expansion of the Pacific Electric in what was already the greatest triumphant implementation of regional interurban-style railroading, with pollution limited to that from the power stations. On the other hand, even if hydrocarbon or battery vehicles had followed a successful Ford/Edison development as light vehicles, you’d have seen the same shift from streetcars to jitneys…

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