Who Was Important in the History of the Cable Car?

• Barnes, Fannie Mae
• Brooks, Benjamin H
• Casebolt, Henry
• Duncan, George S
• Eppelsheimer, William E
• Gillham, Robert
• Hallidie, Andrew S
• Harvey, Charles T
• Hellman, Isais W
• Holmes, Charles B
• Holmes, Howard C
• Hovey, Asa
• Klussmann, Friedel
• Lapham, Roger
• McCann, Raymond M
• Rice, Walter
• Robinson, Sir James Clifton
• Root, Henry
• Smallwood, Charles A
• Thompson, J M
• Yerkes, Charles T

Fannie Barnes ComMUNIty ad. April 2002. Photo by Joe Thompson.

Fannie Mae Barnes became the first woman to operate a cable car grip on 15-Jan-1998.

Barnes was 52 years old at the time. She became a Muni bus driver in 1981. Before taking the grip, Barnes had served as a cable car conductor for six years.

The 25-day training class has an 80% washout rate. No other woman had made it past the first day of training class.

On 18-Jan-2002 she pulled grip on Car 9 as it carried the Olympic Torch on its way up the Hyde Street Hill.

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Benjamin H Brooks (Source: SF Public Utilities Commission).

Benjamin H Brooks was the first person to propose a cable railway in San Francisco.

Brooks, the son of a ship owner and captain, was a successful attorney. He was the first lawyer in the state who would take the cases from Chinese clients.

City records show that Brooks was granted a franchise for a cable line in 1870, along with C S Bushnell, E W Steele, and Abner Doubleday (the man who didn't invent baseball in Cooperstown, NY). They proposed a long system from downtown on various streets out to Cow Hollow. Brooks and engineer W H Hepburn worked out many of the mechanical details of the system. Brooks and his associates were unable to find financing, and Brooks' legal business was time consuming, so they sold their franchise to Andrew Smith Hallidie, a wire cable manufacturer.

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Henry Casebolt was born in Virginia. He came to California in 1851 and established himself as a builder and inventor. He built houses, carriages, and street railroad cars. He served as the contractor for the Sutter Street Railroad (later Railway) and wound up as the principal owner when the promoters defaulted.

Henry Casebolt (Source: San Francisco Morning Call, Saturday, September 24, 1892).

Casebolt designed the famous horse-drawn balloon car for the Sutter Street Railway. The body of this car sat on a pivot, so the car could change ends without a turntable. The cars were attractive to look at, but terrible to ride in when the pivots became worn and the cars became wobbly.

Casebolt's 1876 balloon car. (Source: San Francisco Public Library, San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection, AAC-8118).

The Sutter Street company was not financially successful as a horsecar line. Casebolt saw Hallidie's success with the Clay Street Hill Railroad and proposed that Sutter Street adopt cable technology. Casebolt and his board opened negotiations with Hallidie and his backers. In a preview of patent wars to come, Hallidie demanded $50,000.00 a year and a healthy royalty for each grip used in return for a license to use his patents. Casebolt dropped the negotiations and produced his own grip, with the help of engineer Asa Hovey.

Casebolt and Hovey's side grip with lever control was better than the Hallidie wheel-operated bottom grip.

Beyond just building a better grip, Casebolt deserves recognition for having the idea that cable propulsion could work on flat streets as well as on steep hills.

Casebolt sold his interest in the Sutter Street Railway on 28-Jan-1880.

One of Casebolt's interesting later projects was his "Elevated Railroad", a short line built in Piedmont to demonstrate an overhead cable line. It was not successful.

Henry Casebolt died on 23-Sep-1892. Read his obituary from the Daily Alta California.

From the 1890 Langley's San Francisco Directory at San Francisco Genealogy, page 290: Casebolt, Henry, r. 2700 Pierce I also noticed this listing: Casebolt, Simon M., car repairer Sutter St. Ry, r. 2528 1/2 Sutter

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Civil Engineer George Smith Duncan built the first cable car line outside of San Francisco, the Roslyn Tramway in Dunedin, New Zealand. To get around the Cathedral of Saint Joseph, he was forced to develop the pull curve, which allowed cars to hold the rope while passing through a curve on a grade. The pull curve allowed the cable car to spread to cities that did not have San Francisco's straight streets.

Duncan went on to design the cable tram lines in Melbourne. There he developed the slot brake, an important safety measure to deal with runaways and loose strands. He later advised Brisbane to use electric rather than cable traction for their tramways.

Duncan died in 1930.

Sources disagree as to his middle name. Some accounts have "George W Duncan", others have "George S Duncan". I went with the majority.

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William Eppelsheimer was born in what is now Germany in 1842. He studied engineering in Germany.

William Eppelsheimer designed the first cable line in the world, the Clay Street Hill Railroad. He later designed a bottom grip for the Geary Street Park & Ocean Railway that is still used by today's surviving cable cars. He later designed the first cable railway in Europe, London's Highgate Hill Cable Tramway.

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Robert Gillham was born in 1854 in New York. Trained as an engineer, Gillham moved to Kansas City in 1878. He proposed a cable railway to connect Union Depot with Quality Hill. The Kansas City Cable Railway's Ninth Street incline became a city landmark. The company lost his services when a shopman dropped a grip on Gillham's head while he stood in a pit inspecting the cable.

Gillham later built the Eighth Street Tunnel of the Inter-State Consolidated Rapid Transit Company. In 1888, he built the Peoples Cable Railway. In 1891, Gillham designed the Brooklyn Heights Railroad. Gillham also organized and served as chief engineer of many railways, street and mainline. He built the Kansas City, Pittsburgh, and Gulf Railroad and served as its general manager. Robert Gillham died of pneumonia in 1899.

Robert Gillham published Cable Railways: Their History, and Use in America in 1889. The page includes a brief biographical sketch.

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Andrew S Hallidie (Source: [volume 27:group 21:117a], Jesse Brown Cook Scrapbooks Documenting San Francisco History and Law Enforcement, ca. 1895-1936, BANC PIC 1996.003--fALB, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. ).

Andrew Hallidie promoted the first cable line in the world, the Clay Street Hill Railroad.

Andrew Smith was born in London, on 16-Mar-1836. His father, Andrew Smith, held several patents for the manufacture of metal wire ropes. Andrew Smith the younger later adopted the name Hallidie in honor of his uncle, Sir Andrew Hallidie, who had been a royal physician. Hallidie had hurt his health through overwork, so he and his father visited California in 1852. Andrew Smith returned to Britain in 1853, but his son remained in California. Andrew Hallidie mined, surveyed, blacksmithed, and built bridges.

Hallidie became the first person to make wire rope in California, first at American Bar and then, in 1857, in San Francisco. He built many suspension bridges in northern California. His cables were critical elements of suspension bridges, mine hauling systems, and an endless cable ropeway for industrial purposes which Hallidie patented in 1867. An important feature of the ropeway was a "grip wheel", a driving sheave with clips around its perimeter to keep the cable from slipping. Hallidie later used the grip wheel on the Clay Street Hill Railroad.

Hallidie married Martha Elizabeth Woods in November 1863. They did not have children. He became a citizen in 1864.

Various stories claim that Hallidie conceived of the idea of the cable railway while watching horses struggle to haul cars up Jackson Street, from Kearny to Stockton Street. The horses had to be whipped cruelly. They would sometimes slip and be dragged back down the hill.

This may be true, but Hallidie took over an existing proposal for a cable railway from Benjamin H Brooks, who had not been able to find financing for his plan.

In any event, Hallidie built a model cable railway and obtained financing from three partners. He received his first cable car-related patent on 17-Jan-1871. He had surveyed California Street for his line, but decided that it would be less expensive to build on Clay Street, and that Clay Street came closer to the peak of Nob Hill and so would offer a better demonstration of the system. Hallidie and his partners worked hard to sell stock in the line and did not have much success.

The line and the grip which bears Hallidie's name were designed by engineer William E Eppelsheimer.

The franchise demanded that a test run take place no later than 01-Aug-1873. The first test run actually took place early in the morning on 02-Aug-1873, but the city did not void the franchise. Most accounts say that the first gripman hired by Hallidie looked down the steep hill from Jones and refused to operate the car, so Hallidie took the grip himself and ran the car down the hill and up again without any problems.

The line started regular service on 01-Sep-1873 and was a financial success. Hallidie's patents, managed by a Cable Railway Trust, made him rich.

Hallidie used his time and money in many ways to help his fellow citizens.

Hallidie was a founding member of the Mechanic's Institute, which still maintains an excellent library in San Francisco. He was president of the Institute from 1868 to 1878. In 1878, he was a member of the original Board of Trustees of the San Francisco Free Library (Clarke, F. H. , "Libraries and Librarians of the Pacific Coast". Overland monthly and Out West magazine/ Volume 18, Issue 107, November, 1891).

Hallidie was an original Regent of the University of California. He served on the Board of Regents for the rest of his life.

Hallidie ran for the State Senate in September, 1873, at the same time the Clay Street Hill road was going into service. He lost. The San Francisco Chronicle, a Republican newspaper, attacked Hallidie violently in a series of articles:

• Subsidy Hallidie (San Francisco Chronicle, Saturday, August 30, 1873)
• PEOPLE'S UNION/Independent Anti-Monopoly/ LEGISLATIVE/
  TICKET (San Francisco Chronicle, Saturday, August 30, 1873)
• Subsidy Hallidie (San Francisco Chronicle, Wednesday, September 3, 1873)
• Hallidie Wins (San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, September 7, 1873)
• Hallidie Loses (San Francisco Chronicle, Friday, September 12, 1873)

Andrew S Hallidie died on 24-Apr-1900. He was buried in buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery, but when that cemetery closed, his body was moved to the common crypt in Cypress Lawn, Colma.

Hallidie was a published author. His works included "The Wire Rope Street Railways of San Francisco, California", an 1881 article from the Scientific American Supplement. This copy was collected by Val Lupiz; with an introduction by Walter Rice.

Ad for Hallidie's California Wire Works.

Plaque dedicated to Hallidie and the Clay Street Hill Railroad. It was moved to the lower terrace of Portsmouth Square when the Square was remodeled in 2001. April 2002. Photo by Joe Thompson.

There is a plaque dedicated to Hallidie and the CSH, on the lower terrace of Portsmouth Square, near Clay and Kearney. The text reads:
Andrew Smith Hallidie
Site of eastern terminus first street cars in world propelled by cable. Commenced operation August 1, 1873. Ceased February 15, 1942. Invented and installed by Andrew S. Halladie, born London, England March 16, 1836. Died San Francisco, April 24, 1900. Pioneer manufacturer of wire cables, Regent University of California, twice member Board of Freeholders for drafting proposed city charter, served on first Board of Trustees, 1878, of the San Francisco Public Library.
Registered State Landmark No. 500
Tablet placed by California State Park Commission
Base furnished by friends of Andrew S. Hallidie

The Hallidie Building on Sutter. September 2001. Photo by Joe Thompson.

The Hallidie Building at 130 Sutter Street was named in his honor. It has a unique glass facade. A plaque in the lobby honors Hallidie:
HALLIDIE BUILDING

NAMED IN HONOR OF ANDREW SMITH HALLIDIE BORN IN LONDON, ENGLAND MARCH SIXTEEN 1836 DIED IN SAN FRANCISCO APRIL TWENTY-FOUR 1900- CREATOR OF OUR CABLE RAILWAY-TWICE MEMBER OF A BOARD OF FREEHOLDERS CHOSEN TO FRAME A CHARTER FOR THIS CITY-REGENT OF THE UNIVERSITY FROM THE FIRST MEETING OF THE BOARD JUNE NINE 1868 TO THE DAY OF HIS DEATH-DURING HIS LAST TWENTY-SIX YEARS DEVOTED CHAIRMAN OF ITS FINANCE COMMITTEE

BUILDER
CITIZEN
REGENT
A MAN OF INTEGRITY

Plaque dedicated to Hallidie at Hallidie Plaza. I had to take the picture at 7 am to be able to avoid the clutter in front of it. May 2002. Photo by Joe Thompson.

Hallidie Plaza, near the Powell Street cable car terminal, was created during the great reconstruction of Market Street for BART in the 1960's & 70's. There is a plaque with an inscription and an Eppelsheimer bottom grip, near the top of the escalators. The plaque is usually hidden behind the tables of several vendors. The inscription, recently refurbished and rededicated, honors Hallidie:

ANDREW S. HALLIDIE
1836-1900

THIS PLAZA IS DEDICATED
TO ANDREW S. HALLIDIE,
DEVELOPER OF THE CABLE
STREET RAILWAY IN 1873.
HIS INGENUITY GAVE SAN
FRANCISCO THE CABLE CAR,
MEMORIALIZED IN SONG,
DECLARED A NATIONAL
LANDMARK AND FOREVER
LOVED BY THE PEOPLE.

From the 1890 Langley's San Francisco Directory at San Francisco Genealogy, page 587: Hallidie A. S., president California Wire Works, suspension bridge builder and Patent Endless Ropeway, factory corner Bay and Mason, office 9 Fremont, r. 1026 Washington

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William Ratigan's children's book, Young Mister Big: The Story of Charles Thompson Harvey the Young Traveling Salesman Who Built the World's Mightiest Canal, published in 1955.

Charles Thompson Harvey, born in 1829, was a self-trained civil engineer. In 1852, while Harvey was in Northern Michigan recovering from a bout of typhoid, he heard that Congress had passed an act granting 750,000 acres of federal land to any company which could build a canal around Saint Mary's Falls, which connect Lake Superior and Lake Huron.

Harvey went to his employers, the Fairbanks Scale Company, and persuaded them to build the canal. Despite the fact that he was a salesman and accountant, he became the primary contractor and engineer. Learning on the job, he built the Sault Sainte Marie (Soo) Ship Canal, which opened in 1855. Harvey and his wife, Sarah Van Eps, settled in the Upper Michigan area and founded the town of Harvey. Their home, the Bayou House, still stands.

In 1867, Harvey, apparently a resident of Yonkers, New York by that time, designed and promoted a cable-driven passenger railway, the West Side and Yonkers Patent Railway. Demonstrated on 07-Dec-1867 and opened on 01-Jul-1868, the West Side and Yonkers was the first elevated passenger rapid transit line. For various reasons, it was not a success.

Harvey's finances were wrecked, along with those of many other people, on Black Friday, 24-Sep-1869, when Jay Gould and Jim Fisk's attempt to corner the gold market shattered the American economy.

Charles T Harvey died in 1912.

From Compton's Online:
"Harvey, Charles T. (1829-1912), U.S. civil engineer; directed construction of the first Sault Sainte Marie canal, which was completed in 1855; built elevated railway line in New York City."

One of the locks on Charles T Harvey's Soo Canal.

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I W Hellman, banker and co-promoter of the Los Angeles Cable Railway (Source: [volume 27:group 6:33a], Jesse Brown Cook Scrapbooks Documenting San Francisco History and Law Enforcement, ca. 1895-1936, BANC PIC 1996.003--fALB, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley).

Isais W Hellman, who promoted the Los Angeles Cable Railway, was born in what is now Germany in 1842. He came to Los Angeles in 1859 and became a dry goods merchant. Like many industrious merchants, Hellman drifted into banking. He was president of the Nevada Bank from 1890 to 1898, the Nevada National Bank from 1898 to 1905, and Wells Fargo/Nevada National Bank from 1905 until his death in 1920. The bank operated from his home on Jackson Street after the main branch was destroyed in the 18-Apr-1906 Fire and Earthquake. From 1893 to 1916, he was president of the Union Trust Company, which merged with Wells Fargo in 1924. His son and grandson were later presidents of Wells Fargo Bank.

This Date in Wells Fargo History
February 4, 1893.

Isaias W Hellman was modest in his personality, but not in his dreams. From 1859 to 1920, respected California banking historian Ira Cross declared, Hellman was "one of the outstanding financial forces in Southern California, and participated in laying the solid foundations for its subsequent prosperity." Three years after moving to San Francisco, Hellman incorporated the Union Trust Company, "the first bona fide trust company," in Cross's opinion, on the Pacific Coast. With California's stable, diversified, and complex economy, men and women of means needed sound financial advice for themselves and their heirs. Within a year, UTC had $1.5 million in trust accounts, when $15 million was good assets for a commercial bank. At the close of 1923, it merged with Wells Fargo Bank.

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Charles B Holmes, president of the Chicago City Railway, became interested in cable propulsion, which had not spread to other US cities beyond San Francisco. Holmes visited San Francisco in 1880 and was impressed. He licensed the cable trust's patents and secured the services of Asa Hovey, who had designed the Sutter Street Railway. Holmes had faith that cable technology could work in a harsher climate than San Francisco's.

The Chicago City Railway became the most successful operating company in the industry.

Holmes gave an early interview while the company was making the transition from horse cars to cable cars on State Street:

• THE CABLE-CAR LINE/Progress of the Work -- Eleven Trains and the Horse-Cars Still Running (Omaha Daily Bee, Wednesday, February 15, 1882)

In 1889, Holmes purchased a three quarter interest in the Los Angeles Cable Railway from Isais W Hellman and James F Crank. Holmes reorganized the company as the Pacific Railway. Augustine W Wright of Chicago designed the system using patents controlled by the industry trust.

The Pacific Railway was unsuccessful and Holmes was financially ruined.

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Howard C Holmes, engineer (Source: The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Supplement I, 1910).

Engineer Howard Carleton Holmes was born in Nantucket, Massachusetts on 10-June-1854. He came to San Francisco when he was 5.

Holmes designed the Ferries & Cliff House Railway's lines. According to an obituary in The San Francisco Bay Marine Piling Survey, Second Annual Progress Report (1922), he was also involved with building the Presidio & Ferries Railway, the extension of the California Street Cable Railroad to Market Street and the new O'Farrell/Jones/Hyde line, the Portland Cable Railway, the Spokane Cable Railway, and the Madison Street Cable Railway in Seattle. He also built electric lines in Stockton, Sacramento, and Oakland.

He became Chief Engineer of the State Board of Harbor Commissioners and built the Ferry Building and many of the piers in San Francisco.

Howard C Holmes married Josephine Bauer of Philadelphia in 1883. He died on 30-October-1921.

From the 1890 Langley's San Francisco Directory at San Francisco Genealogy, page 654: Holmes Howard C., civil engineer, r. 3019 Sacramento

Hello Central, Give Me Howard Holmes Here are the listings for Howard C Holmes from the February, 1903 Pacific States Telephone and Telegraph Company San Francisco phone directory: Main 1868. Holmes, Howard C., Chief Engnr. S.F. Dry Dock Co., Ferry Bldg. Baker 956. Same [Holmes, Howard C.], r. 2522 Green. Dedicated volunteers at San Francisco Genealogy typed in every page of the book.

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Engineer Asa Hovey worked with Henry Casebolt to design the Sutter Street Railway. He created the first side grip, which became the most common type of grip in the industry.

C B Holmes hired Hovey to design the first US line outside of San Francisco, the Chicago City Railway.

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Mrs Friedel Klussmann, the Cable Car Lady. (Source: San Francisco Public Library Digital Archive, San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection)

Friedel Klussmann, the Cable Car Lady, led the campaign that saved the San Francisco cable cars in the late 1940's.

In 1947, San Francisco Mayor Roger Lapham announced plans to scrap all remaining cable car lines in San Francisco, finishing the work that had started in 1942 when the Sacramento/Clay and Castro Street lines had been replaced by busses.

Mrs Friedel Klussmann, a prominent member of San Francisco society, read about the plan and began plotting a revolution at a joint meeting of the California Spring Blossom and Wildflowers Association and the San Francisco Federation of the Arts. She formed the Citizens Committee to Save the Cable Cars, which collected 50,000 signatures to put Proposition 10 on the November ballot. This grass-roots movement sought facts to counter the bureaucrats' arguments and organized the citizens of the city to fight for a piece of their heritage. The proposition to save the cable cars won 77% of the vote and saved the cable cars, but Mrs Klussmann's committee rose again whenever cable cars were threatened by cost-cutting, soulless bureaucrats.

Lucius Beebe said Mrs Klussmann was designated to wield terror and authority once possessed by the Vigilance Committee of 1851.

Mrs Klussmann died at the age of 90 in 1986 and the cable cars wore black.

Mrs Klussmann also founded San Francisco Beautiful in 1947.

On 04-Mar-1997, the 50th anniversary of the Committee's initial storming of City Hall, the Friends of the Cable Car Museum dedicated a mural to Mrs Klussmann at the cable car barn.

On 01-Dec-1997, the city dedicated the turntable at the outer terminal of the Powell/Hyde line to Mrs Klussmann.

Read "The Cable Car Lady and the Mayor", a good article by Walter Rice and Val Lupiz about Mrs Klussman's battles.

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Mayor Roger Lapham, the man who tried to get rid of the cable cars. Detail of a larger photo, enhanced by Joe Thompson. (Source: San Francisco Public Library, San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection, AAA-5771).

Roger Dearborn Lapham was born on in 1883 in New York City. He served as president of the American Hawaiian Steamship Company, as a member of the National Defense Mediation Board, and headed government missions to China and Greece.

Lapham was elected Mayor of San Francisco in 1943 on a platform that promised to clean up corruption in government and run the city on business principles. He did many good things, but is primarily remembered for one unfortunate act, trying to get rid of the cable cars.

In his State of the City address in January, 1947, Lapham proposed replacing them with buses. The reaction, led by Mrs Friedel Klussmann, was immediate and violent. Lapham's plan was defeated by the voters in November.

Lapham died on 16 April 1966.

The July 15, 1946 edition of Time featured San Francisco Mayor Roger Lapham on its cover. The article inside said "On July 16 the city will go to the polls and decide whether to recall Mayor Roger Dearborn Lapham. Some San Franciscans wanted to oust him because his administration had put through a 3¢ fare rise on the city's rattletrap trolley lines." Read the complete article

The February 24, 1947 edition of Life described the early stages of the fight to save the cable cars from Mayor Roger Lapham. The article said "Civic-minded San Franciscans and sentimentalists all over the U.S. denounced the move, ridiculed Lapham's claim that the cars were losing $200,000 a year, wondered how buses, even if they could climb the hills, would lose any less." Read the complete article

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Ray McCann was born in New York, but moved to San Francisco in 1969. He loved the city and served as one of its ambassadors when he went to work as a cable car gripman in 1979. During the Great Reconstruction in 1982-1984, he wrote Muni's first manual on operating cable cars.

On 12-Aug-1984, McCann and his conductor, Charles Gertsbacher, were taking a full load of passengers up the Hyde Street hill when a suicidal driver drove down the wrong side of the street at high speed and hit the cable car head-on. McCann was knocked off his feet and the car rolled backwards down the hill. Gertsbacher fought through the crowd of passengers and found McCann dazed and bleeding on the floor. Together, they pulled the emergency brake and stopped the car. The driver died, but many others would have, too, had it not been for the heroic action of the gripman and conductor. They both received medals from the US Department of Transportation.

Mrs Kathleen McCann reports that "...with stitches in his head and still bandaged he went to the barn the day after the accident and gripped one of the cars for a short period of time because he felt that if he didn't face it right away that fear would somehow mar the deep affection he had for working on the Cable Cars".

McCann's many charities included a yearly luncheon for senior citizens at Old Saint Mary's Church.

Ray McCann died on 29-May-1997 of melanoma; he was only 47.

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Walter Ellery Rice, whom I am proud to have called a friend, passed away on 12-December-2007.

He was what used to be called a man of parts. Walter, a native of San Francisco, was a PhD, Associate Dean and Professor Emeritus of Economics at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, a historian who has written on many topics related to transit and railways, a die-hard fan of the San Francisco Giants, and a keeper of goats. This list covers only a small part of his accomplishments. He was former chairman of the Friends of the Cable Car Museum, and was currently a member of the board of the Western Railway Museum.

I first got to know Walter when he was setting up the website of the Friends and he wrote to me with some questions.

I remember him as a gentleman, a man of great vitality, a good guy who took an interest in people of all sorts, a family man, and a person who lived to share his great knowledge with others. Walter and his wife Laurie were kind hosts to the many visitors who turned up at their home, including me and my family.

I was honored that he made so many contributions to this website. I highly recommend his interview with Mrs Barbara Kahn Gardner, the daughter of Samuel Kahn, President of San Francisco's Market Street Railway, the chronology, his articles about the Manx Electric Railway, the Isle of Man Railway, and the Great Orme Tramway, and the many pieces of information and images that Walter allowed me to use.

I also recommend his many books and magazine articles. Here are a few books that come to mind:

• Of Cables and Grips: The Cable Cars of San Francisco by Walter Rice and Robert Callwell. Read the text of the second edition
• San Francisco's Powell Street Cable Cars by Walter Rice and Emiliano Echeverria
• San Francisco's Interurban to San Mateo by Walter Vielbaum, Robert Townley, Walter Rice, and Emiliano Echeverria
• The Key System: San Francisco and the Eastshore Empire (Images of Rail) by Walter Rice and Emiliano Echeverria
• Rails of California's Central Coast (Coming Soon) by Walter Rice and Emiliano Echeverria

I firmly believe that Walter had a long list of questions ready for when he would meet Andrew Hallidie, Henry Root, James W Harris, and Frank J Sprague. Charles Smallwood probably introduced them. Many people will miss Walter. We are lucky to have known him.

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Sir James Clifton Robinson, from the New York Tribune, 07-November-1910, page 1.

James Clifton Robinson was born in Birkenhead in 1848. In the 1860s, he went to work for George Francis Train, an American who built the first tramways in Britain. Robinson went on to a long and varied career as an engineer and manager in the transit industry.

Robinson served as General Manager of the Los Angeles Cable Railway/Pacific Cable Railway in Los Angeles. He was allegedly fired after a huge rainstorm on 24-December-1889 obstructed the conduits with debris. Robinson bet someone a cigar that he would have cars running the next afternoon. He ordered the cables started the next day and caused severe damage to the cables and machinery, which were full of gravel and sand.

He returned to Britain and became known as the "Tramway King."

from the New York Tribune, 07-November-1910, page 1:
"He designed and constructed the London United Electric tramway system and also constructed the first tramway system in Bristol in 1895. He was the managing director and engineer of the Imperial Tramways Company, and constructed and reorganized the Dublin Souther District electric tramways in 1896 and the Middlesborough, Stock and Thornaby electric tramway in 1898.

"For his services in the developing of the railroad systems in London King Edward knighted him in 1905. Sir Clifton was managing director and engineer of the London United Electric Tramways, Imperial Tramways, director and engineer of the Bristol Electric Tramways, and director of the Metropolitan District Underground Electric Railways, of London and the Corris Railways."

Sir James was riding with his wife on a Lexington Avenue electric car in New York on 06-November-1910 when he collapsed with what may have been a stroke. The conductor and two passengers carried him to a drug store, where he died. I suppose an old tramway hand would see something appropriate about taking ill on a transit vehicle.

Sir James was a pioneering automobilist and a prolific writer. His writings included "A Year's Progress of Cable Motive Power", a paper about cable traction delivered at the Tenth Annual Meeting of the American Street-Railway Association, held at the Monongahela House, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on October 21 and 22, 1891.

He and his wife were survived by a son.

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Henry Root in 1920.

Henry Root, an influential cable railway engineer, was born in Vermont in 1845. He worked as surveyor and engineer on Central Pacific Railroad through the Sierra and across Nevada.

In 1877, Leland Stanford, one of the owners of the Central Pacific, hired Root to design and build the California Street Cable Railroad. Stanford initially refused to pay the Traction Railway Company $40,000.00 for a license. After the Trust sued for infringement, Stanford was forced to pay $30,000.00. Root's innovations on the California Street line, especially a reinforced concrete conduit, were the basis of important patents.

When Stanford promoted the Market Street Cable Railway in 1883, he engaged Root to design and build it. For this line, Root developed the combination car, with an open and closed section on one car. Root later designed the double ended combination car still used on California Street.

Both lines used a single jaw side grip that was widely imitated, legally and otherwise, in the cable railway industry.

Root wrote a privately published autobiography: Henry Root, Personal History and Reminiscences with Personal Opinions on Contemporary Events 1845-1921. Only 100 copies were printed. I have posted some excerpts.

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Charles A Smallwood was a good man who was the pre-eminent historian of San Francisco's Market Street Railway.

From the San Francisco Chronicle, 16-Apr-1986

Charles A Smallwood

Charles A Smallwood, a retired cable car repair foreman, author of a book on San Francisco streetcar history and collector of nickelodeons, was found dead Wednesday in his Richmond District home.

Mr Smallwood, 73, was one of the last surviving employees of the Market Street Railway, which was sold to the Municipal Railway in 1944. He was one of the country's best-known electric railway historians and his photos have appeared in dozens of books.

Near the end of World War II, while serving as a sergeant in an Army transportation battalion that operated the trans-Iranian railway, Mr Smallwood was sent on a secret mission to Moscow to hand over US-owned railway equipment to the Soviet government.

A native of San Francisco, Mr Smallwood went to work for the Market Street Railway as a night mechanic in 1938 and worked in most of the Muni's streetcar barns before retiring in 1974 as foreman of the cable car repair crew.

Mr Smallwood's 475-page book "The White Front Cars of San Francisco," published in 1971, has become a collector's item.

His interest in old machinery led to his acquisition of more than 50 nickelodeons. Many of the nickelodeons in the old Nevada mining town of Virginia City belong to Mr Smallwood.

Mr Smallwood is survived by a sister, Marie, who also worked for the Municipal Railway until her retirement.

Funeral services are pending at WC Laswell & Co, Daly City.

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J M Thompson was an engineer who worked for the patent trust's Pacific Cable Construction Company.

In 1885, he designed and built the Second Street Cable Railway in Los Angeles. The line's single track technology was not a success.

Thompson did most of his work in the Pacific Northwest.

In 1888, he designed and built Seattle's first cable car line, the Seattle City Railway. Thompson designed and promoted the Front Street Cable Railway in 1889. In 1891, he designed the Madison Street Cable Railway. He designed the West Seattle Cable Railway in 1890. The only Seattle cable railway line he was not involved with was the Union Trunk Line.

In 1887, he designed the Portland Cable Railway in Portland, Oregon. Financial problems delayed completion until 1890. This line had a great deal of trouble with Portland's harsh climate.

In 1888, Thompson designed and built the north line of the Spokane Cable Railway in Spokane, Washington. This was another single track line.

From the 1890 Langley's San Francisco Directory at San Francisco Genealogy, page 1284: Thompson, J. M., president Pac. Cable Construction Co., 258 Market, r. Palace Hotel

I sure would like to find out what the "JM" stood for.

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Charles T Yerkes. (Source: YERKES OBSERVATORY PHOTOGRAPH. Used with permission)

Charles Tyson Yerkes fit the common Nineteenth Century view of capitalist as thief. He did, in fact, serve time in the penitentiary in Pennsylvania for stealing funds from the city of Philadelphia.

Yerkes was born in 1837 in Philadephia. He worked his way up from clerk to banker. In an 1871 financial panic, his firm went bankrupt and his misappropriation of city funds was revealed. He was sentenced to 33 months in the penitentiary but was pardoned after serving seven. He moved to Chicago in 1881.

In 1886, Yerkes purchased the North Chicago Street Railroad. When he converted the company's main lines to cable traction in 1888, they worked badly. Much of the hostility the public felt towards the company was magnified by its hostility towards Yerkes and his colorful methods. His techniques for influencing legislators included bribery and badger games. He later acquired the West Chicago Street Railroad.

In his 1892, in an effort to buy respectability, he donated funds for the Yerkes Observatory to the University of Chicago. Their web page has much interesting biographical information about Yerkes.

Yerkes built large parts of the Chicago Elevated. He left for London about 1900 and built some underground lines there.

Yerkes died in New York on 29-Dec-1905.

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