The California Street Cable Railroad (Cal Cable) was a long-serving cable car operator in San Francisco, founded by Leland Stanford. The company's first line opened on California Street in 1878 and is the oldest cable car line still in operation.
The company remained independent until 1951, outlasting all the other commercial streetcar and cable car operators in the city. The city purchased and reopened the lines in 1952; the current cable car system is a hybrid made up of the California Street line, and the Hyde Street section of Cal Cable's O'Farrell, Jones & Hyde line, together with other lines already in municipal ownership.
Famous quotes containing the words california, street, cable and/or railroad:
“The apparent ease of California life is an illusion, and those who believe the illusion will live here in only the most temporary way.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1935)
“The street is full of humiliations to the proud.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“To be where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars.”
—Douglass Cross (b. 1920)
“I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can’t say—I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.”
—Harriet Tubman (1821–1913)