I’m looking for websites giving the basics of how the San Francisco system works. Everything I find with Google is tourist-related stuff, whereas I’m after slightly geeky stuff to do with how the cable system survived in this city almost exclusively.
Try here. 
Thanks, I tried there, but their ‘how cable cars work’ sections basically seems to say ‘they grip the cables’. I’ve found other sites telling me how driving these cars is a highly-skilled role, etc etc, but nothing to explain why!
Maybe here?
The design uses a human controlled gripper. To go over pulleys and transfer cable, the driver has to ungrip and coast to the grip spot. This is a talent few possess.
The biggest thrill from a vacation in San Francisco was standing behind the driver. He explained everything to me and my wife as we zipped along the road. He even stopped at the top of Lombard street so I could take a few pictures. That was the way to take a cable car ride. I also learned that the brakes are just blocks of wood that get pushed against the tracks to slow and stop the cars.
I think they survived there because they are in fact quite useful for transportation on the steep hills of the city, some of which are a challenge to walk up even for fit people. That let them last long enough to become a symbol of the city, which then turned into a tourist attraction.
When I was last in SF they had pretty much lost their utility for locals because of very long waits due to tourists wanting to have a “Rice-a-Roni” experience. The combination of packed rides and tourist draw is why they are still there.
Reading the Wikipedia articles on cable cars and the San Francisco cable cars specifically, it looks like the reason they’re the last operating cable car system is nostalgially. Electrial trolley systems are cheaper to run, and when they were first developed most cities switched from cables to electric. However, San Francisco’s hills were too steep for the electrical trolleys at the time and so the cable cars were retained. By the time electrical trolleys were powerful enough to make it up hills that steep, the cable cars were too much a part of the city’s identity to get rid of them. But they’ve been downsized significantly - there are only three lines running, down from 21 in the 1890s. They’re now a national historic landmark (the only one that moves) and a major tourist attraction in a tourism city.
FTR, I’m a native San Franciscan, and I’ve ridden a cable car exactly once - when my cousin was visiting. When this came up in another thread recently, someone said that they used to ride the cable cars regularly when they lived in the city, but IME, that’s pretty unusual. Getting from Point A to Point B is definitely not the point of the ride for most passengers.
D’oh, apparently one of two: the St. Lawrence streetcar line in New Orleans is the other.
That would be gripman, a unique job title if there ever was one. There are three braking systems on the cable cars. First there’s the grip on the cable. So long as that’s tight, the car won’t go any faster than the cable, no matter how steep the hill, about nine miles per hour. Second, like you said, there’s the track brakes, blocks of oak that have to be replaced every couple weeks. Lastly, there’s the emergency brake. It’s the third lever in front of the gripman, painted red. Pull it and a big, wedge-shaped piece of iron drops into the slot, stopping the car Now – usually resulting in some broken limbs, concussions, and such. Naturally, it’s used only if the alternative is worse, and the wedge usually has to be freed with a cutting torch.
Can you tell I’ve read up on these things?
DD
Not-so-minor nit - The grip on the cable is not a brake. It’s a go. The cars have wheel brakes, track brakes (the wood blocks) and emergency slot brakes.
I was on a runaway once, about 10 years ago, and they had to drop the slot brake. It is quite a multi-sensory experience. First is the sensation of moving faster than normal. Then comes a holler from the gripman to the conductor: “BRAKES!” and the response of “THAT"S IT!” from the rear end of the car. The smell of burning wood pervades, accompanied by a chattering howl of the wood against the tracks. Finally, “HOLD ON!” and “THUNK! BANG!” and a chorus of “EEK!” and “Aaahh!”
And yes, the entire line was out of service for the rest of the day.
Not only does it take a fair bit of coordination and skill to be a gripman, it takes a lot of strength, (especially for turning the cars on the Powell lines) which seems to make this a male-dominated job. Actually, I’ve not seen any female operators yet, so “gripman” seems to be a valid title. The cable car division has one of the highest rates of workers’ comp injuries at Muni as it is such physical work.
I used to live on Washington at Taylor (i.e. Nob Hill), one block uphill from the Cable Car Barn and Powerhouse. The Powell/Hyde line ran right by me, the Powell/Mason line was one block’s walk, and the California Street line three blocks’ walk. I hardly ever took the P/M line (it goes to the tackier end of Fisherman’s Wharf), but used to take the P/H or California lines almost daily.
The California line is not as popular with tourists as the Powell lines since it avoids Union Square and the Wharf, but is used a great deal by locals going between the Financial District and Polk Gulch via Nob Hill (during rush hours, it’s often easier to get a seat on the California St. Cable Car than on the 1-California trolleybus line that parallels it).
To get a ride on one of the the Powell St. cars, there are a couple of tricks:
-
Usually, the gripmen seem to make it so the cable car is not 100% full when starting out, but that there are a couple of hanging-on spots free in the front part. These will usually be on the offside (i.e. furthest from the curb). If you’re boarding mid-line, aim immediately for one of these by crossing in front of the car (once it is stopped, of course).
-
Don’t board at one of the popular tourist stops (this includes the ends of the line plus Hyde/Lombard and Powell/California). The gripman will often just roll on by a group of obvious tourists if he’s only got one or two hanging-on spots open. If you’re one stop further on (or, better still, one block before the tourists), and look like a local, he’s more likely to stop for you.
-
Especially if you’re a local, be friendly with the gripman and conductor. There’s only so many of them, and I was recognizing pretty much all of them after a while, and vice versa. If they recognize you, they’re more likely to stop when they’re almost full, and make people squeeze together to free up a space.
[nitpick]
Actually, the St. Charles Avenue streetcar.
[/nitpick]
Back to the OP:
This site contains some reasonably good technical descriptions, plus a page of “Tales from the Grip” (anecdotes from gripmen). The linked page says that there has been one female “gripman”, but neglects to say when. I’ve seen technical drawings of the details of the grip, “rope” (i.e. cable), rollers at track bends, etc, but only in the Cable Car Barn Museum and in books, not on the Web.
There’s are several reasons why cable cars are ideally suited to San Francisco, and some have to do with the mix of terrain and climate. It was really the hills that made the cable car necessary, since in flatter cities you could just use a horse and cart. Before the cable car, Nob and Russian Hills were not inhabited by the well-to-do, because it was hard to get up them in a horse-drawn carriage. The cable car actually helped to develop Nob Hill for the wealthy.
Cable cars work well in cities with straight roads, because every bend requires rollers to turn the cable, which increases complexity and cost and reduces efficiency. The area of SF over which the cable cars still run is on a grid pattern, which means the track and cable only turn corners at a few locations. Now, San Francisco can only really tolerate a grid pattern on its downtown hills because it almost never snows in SF. Cities for which snow is more than a once-every-twenty-year occurrence tend not to be built on a grid pattern in their hilly areas, but have roads generally following contour lines as much as possible with the occasional connecting slope at as shallow an angle as practical.
That’s not to say that other hilly cities didn’t follow San Francisco’s lead in building cable car systems, but AFAIK the particular geography and climate – together with recent amassed wealth due to the 1849 Gold Rush, the 1859 Comstock Lode Silver bonanza in Nevada, and the 1869 completion of the Transcontinental Railroad – made San Francisco in 1873 the perfect place to create the cable car as we know it. There was a ton of money floating around, and railroad barons wanted mansions with nice views.
During my last spell in San Francisco (1996-2000) there was a frightening spate of cable cars losing control and careening down those hills at high speed :eek:
Cool!
I’ve ridden them just maybe three or four times. But the California St line, running from Van Ness Ave (US-101) to the heart of the Financial District is pretty useful for those that live along it, I’d imagine.
As soon as I started reading this thread, what came to my mind was the smell. The cable cars exude this not-unpleasant, oil/greasy smell that I always associate with them.
Are you sure that’s not the Gripmen you smell?
Another daily rider of the California line checking in. I’m living right at California & Jones. I take the cable car to/from work right across from the Drumm turnaround. Mostly locals on this route with the occassional crowd of tourists from the flyover states. They haven’t been running for the last few days due to repairs (?), maybe they had a runaway and I missed it!