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:
“It shone on everyone, whether they had a contract or not. The most democratic thing I’d ever seen, that California sunshine.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“The skyscraper establishes the block, the block creates the street, the street offers itself to man.”
—Roland Barthes (1915–1980)
“To be where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars.”
—Douglass Cross (b. 1920)
“This I saw when waking late,
Going by at a railroad rate,
Looking through wreaths of engine smoke
Far into the lives of other folk.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)