Скачать или смотреть Ropes and Rails The Cable Cars of San Francisco September 1982

From the back of the VHS Tape:
"San Francisco got its first cable cars in 1873 when Andrew Hallidie opened his Clay Street Hill Railroad. It was a success, and more lines were built throughout the city: by the 1890s, 8 companies were operating 20 routes.

Although San Francisco was the first city of cable cars, and had the most extensive network of lines, it was by no means the only city to ride the rope: 28 other American cities had at least one cable road, and in Seattle the last cars ran as late as 1940.

By the 1890s electric traction had proved more practical than the cable, and some of San Francisco's cable lines had already been electrified when the earthquake and fire of 1906 destroyed every line in the city except one. The only ones rebuilt as cable operations were those with hills too steep for trolley cars. By World War Il, even some of these had been rendered obsolete by rubber-tired busses.

In the 1950s the California Street Cable Railroad, which had remained an independent private company up until then, was purchased by the city's Municipal Railway, which had been operating the the Powell Street lines of the former Ferries and Cliff House Railway since 1944. It was decided to close the inner parts of Cal Cable's Hyde Street line, and the outer part of the Muni's Washington/Jackson line, joining the remainder together into a new Powell and Hyde route, the longest in the present system. The Cal Cable powerhouse at California and Hyde was closed at the same time.

In late 1982 the entire physical plant had become so worn that it was closed for a complete rebuilding. We videotaped the system just weeks before the closure."