Off Topic » San Francisco Muni train car for sale

A friend that I have been riding with for years has an old San Francisco Muni train car for sale on Craigslist. I thought you might like to see photos of the vehicle. Kind of interesting. He used to use it as an office for his trucking business years ago, but he is now retired and just wants it gone from his property. High bidder gets the vehicle, but moving it off of the property and somewhere else might cost more than the thing is worth. Although he says that he has already received 20 offers, in addition to an inquiry from a San Francisco newspaper reporter who would wants to write an article about the train car: https://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/for/d/r...7572060179.html

Here is a link to the interesting San Francisco Chronicle regarding my friend's SF Muni car that he wants to sell.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/arti...le-17774539.php

Zitat von Richard230 im Beitrag #2

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Here is a link to the interesting San Francisco Chronicle regarding my friend's SF Muni car that he wants to sell.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/arti...le-17774539.php

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I had no problem seeing the complete illustrated article, but perhaps it is because I already used that link to see it and it was only giving me one taste of the apple.

I had no problem seeing the complete illustrated article, but perhaps it is because I already used that link to see it and it was only giving me one taste of the apple. Maybe if you Google San Francisco Chronicle and visit it directly they will allow you to see the article once without needing to pay a fee?

I tried to cut-and-paste the article, but I had no luck with that. Not surprising, I guess.

What is the asking price, or is he taking bids?

Zitat von Lee im Beitrag #6

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What is the asking price, or is he taking bids?

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Zitat von Richard230 im Beitrag #7

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He is taking bids. He hopes to get as much as $5K for the vehicle, but my guess is that he will take anything as long as the buyer hauls it away, which he guesses would cost at least $10K.

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Zitat von Lee im Beitrag #8

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Zitat von Richard230 im Beitrag #7

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He is taking bids. He hopes to get as much as $5K for the vehicle, but my guess is that he will take anything as long as the buyer hauls it away, which he guesses would cost at least $10K.

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Does it have to be hauled as one unit or can the cars be separated?

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The Muni car story hit the front page of the February 23rd issue of the (contains recycled paper) San Francisco Chronicle and continues on to page A7 for another 2/3 of the page. Quite an impressive write-up and several nice color photos. The offers to buy the Muni vehicle are still coming into the Craigslist ad, but nothing has jelled yet.

Zitat von Richard230 im Beitrag #10

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The Muni car story hit the front page of the February 23rd issue of the (contains recycled paper) San Francisco Chronicle and continues on to page A7 for another 2/3 of the page. Quite an impressive write-up and several nice color photos. The offers to buy the Muni vehicle are still coming into the Craigslist ad, but nothing has jelled yet.

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My friend who owns the street cars told me yesterday that they had been sold and for the price that he wanted. It was sold to a family who owns a farm in Northern California. They plan to transport it to their property, fix it up and turn it into a B&B. Seems like a good idea and likely much cheaper than building a new building. He expects that the rail cars will be picked up within a week or two and finally hauled off of his storage yard to a good home. That makes him happy.

Here are some history excerpts from the San Francisco Chronicle article regarding these Muni cars that you might find interesting:

“A Streetcar Named Undesirable” was the San Francisco Chronicle headline in 1978. That was before Boeing Vertol had delivered a single lightrail vehicle for the city’s new Muni Metro subway. By the time the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency began retiring the repair-prone cars in 1995 — decades before their intended life span was reached — they were a renowned failure. The Boeing streetcars mostly elicit happy nostalgia now. These were the Muni lines of the Dianne Feinstein/Joe Montana era of San Francisco. City residents rode the Boeing cars to the first big SF Pride events, the first 49ers Super Bowl parade and endless trips to the San Francisco Zoo and Ferry Building. San Francisco graffiti artist Nate Tan recently incorporated one on a T-shirt design.

But they were an epic disaster for the city government in the 1980s and 1990s, when they were the first fleet in the Muni Metro subway. Boeing was new to designing streetcars, and San Francisco was in a hard place after Richard Nixon pledged almost no federal money would be earmarked for cars made overseas. Backed into a corner, Boston and San Francisco each ordered more than 100 of the Boeing cars at more than $300,000 each. Market Street Railway President Rick Laubscher said Boeing Vertol, which had come from building Vietnam-era helicopters, let their hubris show when they refused to bring in experts in public transportation. “You had aerospace engineers designing these things, and it had to be space age, one way or the other,” Laubscher said. “The problem is transit vehicles are not aircraft, and the abuse they take every day in operation is a completely different thing. Components were failing all the time.”

The cars were known to passengers for their high-pitched screeching and constantly broken doors, but Muni maintenance staff knew of dozens more problems, including panels that required a blowtorch to open to make simple repairs. “It takes two guys four days to change four $100 items,” Muni General Manager William Stead griped to The Chronicle in 1988. “It should only take a few hours. We’ve lived with the problem, but now the joints are starting to come apart.”

By the mid-1990s, Muni was importing new cars from Italy and ditching the Boeing models as fast as they could, even though they barely made it to half of their promised life span. No American company has mass-produced public transit streetcars since. Muni eventually brought back the predecessor to the Boeing streetcars, the PCC streetcars named for the Presidents’ Conference Committee, to populate the historic F-line fleet, but the Boeing streetcars were mostly junked. There may be only three still in existence: The Western Railway Museum in Solano County and an Oregon museum each have one, plus the one the Fleiges have put up for sale

Zitat von Richard230 im Beitrag #12

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My friend who owns the street cars told me yesterday that they had been sold and for the price that he wanted. It was sold to a family who owns a farm in Northern California. They plan to transport it to their property, fix it up and turn it into a B&B. Seems like a good idea and likely much cheaper than building a new building. He expects that the rail cars will be picked up within a week or two and finally hauled off of his storage yard to a good home. That makes him happy.

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Zitat von Lee im Beitrag #13

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Zitat von Richard230 im Beitrag #12

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My friend who owns the street cars told me yesterday that they had been sold and for the price that he wanted. It was sold to a family who owns a farm in Northern California. They plan to transport it to their property, fix it up and turn it into a B&B. Seems like a good idea and likely much cheaper than building a new building. He expects that the rail cars will be picked up within a week or two and finally hauled off of his storage yard to a good home. That makes him happy.

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That's a good idea.
I've seen cabooses you can rent.

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The Muni Rail car was delivered to its new home on a farm earlier this year. Here is a time-lapse video of it being set up on the property and three photos of the owners and the rail car in place. They plan to turn into an overnight rental once it is renovated. https://streamable.com/9ef32f

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