07-02-08 PHOTOS: California Line Cable Cars

Last year when I attended a conference in San Fran I had enough time budgeted to ride the Powell and Hyde cable car lines. This year when I was there for RSA, I decided to ride the remaining, albeit rather boring, California Line. This line runs along California Ave, straight back and forth, with double ended cars. The grades aren't as severe as the other two lines and the line doesn't really pass anything interesting. Still, I needed to ride them all at some point so I set out on a rainy morning before he conference began to get my ride in.

Nothing much happened so I might as well just give you the link to the pix and some teasers. Note that I have ordered "line tour" images for both eastbound and westbound trips down the line.

http://acm.jhu.edu/~sthurmovik/Railpics/07-02-08_CALIFORNIA_LINE_CABLE_CARS/-Thumbnails.html

#53 climbing the grade.

#60 leaving Van Ness.

Green signal at the Powell diamonds.

07-02-07 PHOTOS: RSA Conference 2007

Much like last year, the 2007 RSA conference was held in San Francisco and in case you hadn't noticed a theme from my other photo posts I attended this conference and went around riding rail transit in the old Homeless capitol of the nation. So far I have covered the Caltran Caltrain and cable cars so this post will cover everything else, namely the MUNI streetcar system and baRT.

This time around I rode the M, K, L and J lines and also took the baRT out to MacArthur in Oakland. Unfortunately this was the rainy season and because the conference went from 8-4 I consistently was shooting in low light or darkness. One interesting thing I did see was the original L-Line terminal which still has some of the original Belgian block footing. I also took a nighttime ride out on the F line to Castro and back.

You can see the whole set of pix at http://acm.jhu.edu/~sthurmovik/Railpics/07-02-07_RSA_2007/-Thumbnails.html

And of course a representative sample for those who are too lazy to click.

F Market former Philly PCC car lays over at Castro...with a follower PCC ruining my shot with his glare.

An F Market Milan Peter Witt car #1895 passes through the Balboa Park terminal on its way to the Geneva carbarn while modern LRV's look on.

The old L-Traval terminal terminal at the Pacific ocean. You can see the original track Belgian block footing with girder rail.  This is the oldest section of track remaining on the MUNI system.

 L-cars lead by Breda LRV #1410B making the turn towards the Zoo just short of the original terminal on Travel St.

07-02-05 PHOTOS: Caltran Caltrain II

With great memory card capacity comes great responsibility. Since my new camera's memory card can hold about 5x as many photos as my old one I have been taking many more photos in each batch and thus this has been one of the reasons it had been taking me so long to process photos. To help improve this situation I am breaking some of the sets up to release the photos in a more timely fashion.

Back in Feb I was back in San Fran attending the 2007 RSA Security Conference. Just like last year I took a quick trip down to San Jose via the Caltran Caltrain. I mostly took pictures out the rear railfan window on the Metra-style gallery equipment of the signals and whatnot, but I got a few other good shots of trans and what not. The weather was kinda crappy so the photos aren't the best, and I was still getting used to the features on my new camera.

You can see all the photos at:
http://acm.jhu.edu/~sthurmovik/Railpics/07-02-05_CALTRAN_CALTRAIN_2/-Thumbnails.html

And of course a little sample of what lies within.

Here is my Southbound local at Milbrae.

 Track worker at San Carlos as we pass a northbound train.

A departing Northbound local at CP-JULIAN with F40 #914.