Historic Streetcars in San Francisco No.1051.
San Francisco Municipal Railway (1960s)
Built 1948 • Operational • Tribute livery
All of San Francisco’s vintage streetcars have interesting histories, but No. 1051 has been adding to its legacy in recent years.
While this was originally a Philadelphia streetcar, it, like No. 1050, was painted in a Muni livery when it joined the San Francisco fleet to open the F-line in 1995. To be specific, it’s painted in the “simplified” green and cream livery that supplanted the famous “Wings” seen on several streetcars in the historic fleet.
The change came after Muni started putting large ads on the sides of its PCCs around 1960 to generate more revenue. These covered up parts of the Wings motif. So, starting in 1963, repainted streetcars sported a simpler cream band running along the side panels of the car. This streetcar is painted in tribute to that scheme.
Many of Muni’s PCCs escaped the simplified scheme, running in their (fading) Wings to the end of their original service life in 1982. For a brief time, at the end of the 1970s, there were four paint schemes on Muni’s PCCs. Eleven streetcars acquired third-hand from Toronto in 1974 had their lower half repainted a dark red and adorned with Muni’s short-lived ribbon logo, modeled after the end of the California Street cable cars. The rest of the car stayed with the Toronto livery. And 30 Muni PCCs were repainted in 1978-79. Original public domain image from Flickr