Hidden San Francisco - San Francisco Railway Museum

San Francisco Railway Museum
Originally uploaded by Ame Otoko

This is a very different museum from the Cable Car Museum, but like the Cable Car Museum, it is probably not well known, even by locals. The SF Railway Museum is a stone’s throw from the Ferry Building, but tucked away enough that you could easily walk by it without noticing.

Don’t let its shoebox size fool you; this museum is packed with history, information, and in sharp contrast to the Cable Car Museum, stuff you actually want to buy. It appears the organization that runs the museum commissioned artists to create very contemporary yet historically rooted items to sell here. There are t-shirts, bags, posters, greeting cards, and magnets that are custom made for the museum. But the other items on sale here too are extremely relevant: San Francisco history books, replicas of placards and station names, postcards of historical photos of streetcars and cable cars, and my favorite of all, the Moleskine travel notebook for San Francisco. I had just picked one of these up for our upcoming trip to Tokyo, but I spend so much time in San Francisco, I had to have this one too.

There are two touch screen monitors which display historic movie footage of streetcars and a visual display of all of the streetcars in the SF stable which you can touch each image to find out information about where the car came from, when it was first put in service in San Francisco, and all the standard measurements (weight, powertrain, seating capacity, etc.).

The staff (of one, when I was there) is friendly and knowledgeable. It’s quite nice to have a person working there that genuinely cares about the history of the streetcars in San Francisco.

I’m not a train freak or anything, but these streetcars represent functional pieces of history, and more than that, moving pieces of art.

More pictures of historic streetcars.

The San Francisco Railway Museum is located at 77 Steuart Street and is open Wed-Sun 10am to 6pm.

Hidden San Francisco - The Cable Car Museum

Vintage San Francisco Cable Car
Originally uploaded by Ame Otoko

Ever wonder how the cable car system in San Francisco actually works? The answer lies at the corner of Washington and Mason Streets, in a quiet neighborhood below posh Nob Hill and a few blocks above the chaos of Chinatown.

The Cable Car Museum is not just a museum, it is the powerhouse of the entire cable car system. When you visit this museum, you will see exactly how the system works, smell the hot oil, hear the humming of the engines. There are also vintage cable cars and models here as well as an authentic cable car bell you can ring (you know you always wanted to!).

Best of all, this little gem of a museum is absolutely free and is always surprisingly uncrowded, probably because it is not easy to find. A great rest stop for a walk up to Nob Hill. The only disappointment is the gift shop, which is full of tacky gifts you could find at any of the junk stores lining Fisherman’s Wharf. It would be great if they stocked this place up with more exclusive merchandise that reflect the classiness cable cars have brought to San Francisco for more than a century.

The Cable Car Museum is located at 1201 Mason St. (at Washington) and is open 10am to 6pm April thru September, 10am to 5pm October thru March.