After 16 years in repair shop purgatory, 129-year old San Francisco Cable Car 8 hit the rails again this week, following a full top to bottom restoration that some worried might never come.
The re-birth of Cable Car 8 was the equivalent of a house remodel going down to the studs. The shop crew rebuilt the car from the wheels up, from the benches to the slatted roof -- painting it in a green color scheme common in the late 40s and early 50s.
A gentle rain christened the car Monday as she slid onto the tracks under the reins of Willa Johnson, only the second woman gripman in the agency's history and part of the two-woman crew taking the car for its inaugural ride. Laubscher noted this year marks 75 years since a woman named Friedel Klussman successfully lead a city-wide revolt to push back against a city proposal to remove the cable cars and replace them with busses. The car rumbled up and over Powell Street and down to the cable car turnaround at Market where a crowd of tourists watched the age-old ritual of crews spinning the car on a turntable using only human power.
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