page_title: San Francisco Historic Trolley Festival
section_title: Origin and development
hierarchical_section_title: San Francisco Historic Trolley Festival / Origin and development
caption_attribution_description: Reconstruction work under way on the cable car tracks in San Francisco in 1983, here looking north on Hyde Street from Clay Street.
context_page_description: The San Francisco Historic Trolley Festival was a heritage streetcar service along Market Street in San Francisco, California, United States. It used a variety of vintage streetcars and operated five to seven days a week, primarily in summer months, between 1983 and 1987. Sponsored by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and operated by the San Francisco Municipal Railway, it was the predecessor of the F Market & Wharves heritage streetcar line that opened in 1995. It used historic streetcars from several different countries, as well as a number of preserved San Francisco cars. The impetus behind the Trolley Festival was that the city's famed cable car system, one of its biggest tourist attractions, was scheduled to be closed for more than a year and a half for renovation, starting in September 1982. The Trolley Festival was conceived as a temporary substitute tourist attraction during the cable car system's closure.
  When its operation began, in the summer of 1983, the Historic Trolley Festival was expected to be a temporary service, operating only five days a week–Thursday through Monday–and not expected to continue beyond that summer's tourist season.
context_section_description: The idea for what came to be called the San Francisco Historic Trolley Festival was born in summer 1982, when regular use of the streetcar tracks on the surface of Market Street–the city's main street–was about to end and a 20-month closure of the cable car system for rebuilding was about to begin.
  Although there had been proposals for a historic-streetcar service along the Embarcadero as early as 1974  and in 1981 Muni planners had also formally proposed the eventual implementation of such a service along Market Street, the idea only really began to attract strong support from the business community and city officials in 1982, as the nearly two-year suspension of all cable car service loomed.  The famed cable car system, a National Historic Landmark and one of the city's biggest tourist attractions, was determined in 1979 to be in need of extensive repairs.  A thorough rebuilding of the entire system was scheduled to begin in September 1982 and last 20 months, with service on all three lines suspended for the duration; it ultimately lasted 21 months (until June 1984).  San Francisco business owners and others who benefited from tourism were very concerned that the temporary closure would lead to a steep drop in the number of visitors to the city.  A historic trolley "festival", using a variety of vintage trolleys from around the U.S. and the world, was proposed as a substitute tourist attraction during the cable car suspension, especially during the one summer season that would be included in the 21-month suspension, summer 1983.
  A phasing-out of the use of the tracks along the surface of Market Street had begun in February 1980, when weekday service on the N Judah line was converted from the old PCC streetcars to new trains of Boeing LRVs (light rail vehicles) and moved into the newly opened upper level of the Market Street subway as the first stage of an upgrading and rebranding of the city's remaining streetcar lines as the Muni Metro.  Weekday service on the four other then-surviving Muni streetcar lines (J, K, L and M) was gradually also converted to the modern, longer trains and moved off of the surface of Market.  By June 1981, all weekday service on the five lines had been moved into the subway, and only on weekends – when the subway was closed – were the tracks on Market Street still in use, with PCC cars still providing the service on weekends.  However, the final conversions were scheduled for fall 1982. Weekend service on J-K-L-M-N would be converted from PCC cars to light-rail vehicles and all use of the Market Street tracks would end, the last day of the old arrangement being set for September 19, 1982.
  In 1981, one of Muni's own preserved vintage trolleys, 1912-built car No. 1, had been operated in fare-free shuttle service along Market Street from the Transbay Terminal to the track wye at 11th & Market on alternate Saturdays beginning April 18.  In September 1981, former Muni car 178 (K-type, built in 1923) was brought to the city on loan from the California Railway Museum (renamed the Western Railway Museum at the beginning of 1985) for operation on railfan trips in conjunction with the 1981 convention of the Association of Railway Museums.  Its loan to Muni was extended, and on some Saturdays in fall 1981 car 1 or 178 ran in service on the J-line.  The operation of the vintage streetcars was well received by the public.  In summer 1982, both cars were operated in regular J-line service almost every weekend and holiday from July 4 until the closure of the Market Street tracks on September 19.
  The popularity of the limited 1981 and 1982 use of historic trolleys in service demonstrated that such operation had the potential to attract tourists and led to the realization that a full-scale service with vintage trolleys might be feasible.   The city's Board of Supervisors and San Francisco Public Utilities Commission both passed resolutions in August 1982 endorsing the continuation of vintage streetcar service in some form.  Car 178's lease ended, and it was returned to the California Railway Museum (Rio Vist
caption: Shown under way in 1983 (here on Hyde Street), the planned closure of the city's cable car system for reconstruc­tion was a key factor behind the 1982 idea to organize a trolley festival for the following summer.
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