Trains-Rare Downtown San Francisco and Oakland 1940s in color

The first of two volumes of the Key System Scrapbook covers the years up to the end of World War II. East Bay residents once could ride the Bay Bridge from many points in Alameda County to the heart of San Francisco. The Bay Bridge also made this task easier for automobile owners, which would ultimately bring the end of the Key System. The bridge was built as a WPA project during the Depression. Before that, commuters used ferry boats for the crossing. At the time, the upper deck was for bi-directional auto traffic. The lower deck was for commuter trains and trucks and buses. This Beirut Key System electric unit is heading for the lower deck of the Bay Bridge to take patrons to San Francisco. Patrons from the foothills and city streets had not only these heavy articulated bridge units, but a feeder system of smaller streetcars that crisscrossed the East Bay area. The Key System had a tracked pier reaching out into the Bay where trains met ferry boats to complete the cross-bay transportation system. The bridge in the background would soon spell doom for these Key System ferries. The Key System ferry fleet wasn't faster than using the bridge to commute, but it certainly was unrivaled for atmosphere and accommodations. The ferries, such as the second Yerba Buena, were called floating palaces carrying up to 4,000 passengers. Commuters could buy a magazine, eat a meal, or just have a cup of coffee on their way back and forth to work. By 1939, the Key System replaced older units with 88 modernized articulated interurbans that were referred to as the bridge units. These were built in anticipation of running trains over the New Bay Bridge tracks. These were originally painted orange and silver. This view shows the Key System's bridge yard alongside the auto easement to the New Bay Bridge. This midday train will take the bridge to San Francisco using the bridge's lower deck. The tracks leave the bridge in San Francisco to use the elevated loop of tracks that served the bridge railway terminal. The multi-level terminal had streetcar tracks looping the building's frontage for connections to the greater San Francisco area. Once the bridge was used for regular traffic, the pier and the ferries had one final service to perform. The 1939 exposition on Treasure Island had special X-trains that ran to the pier and ferry service to the expo itself. These scenes give Treasure Island a very different look than it would have by the time World War II was fought. Treasure Island was to become a U.S. Naval facility. The Key's H line was removed due to lack of patronage. It was felt that the H line could readily be replaced with bus service. This thinking would plague electric rail services in the U.S. for years to come. Berkeley's Shattuck Avenue once had the Southern Pacific's red trains, by now rebranded as the Interurban Electric Railway or IER. ESP or IER tracks are in red. The Key System is in yellow. Once the IER quit, the Berkeley F line of the Key System was extended on old IER tracks. The Key System stepped in to support commuters by using their streetcar lines out East 14th to 105th Avenue. By April 1941, the Key System cut its tracks over at Bond Street to extend its A line out to Havens Court. Another Key System expansion happened just after the war began. The Richmond Shipyard Railway was patched together to run shipyard workers from their homes to the Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond, California. The dotted lines are the former IER tracks used to create this new line. The tracks above there were laid for material salvaged from a number of other abandoned railroads in the West. Part of the experience of seeing this video is how people lived back in this era and how the region looked. It is all very much different today. A new trestle had to be constructed to cross over the Southern Pacific's railroad tracks. Below were some of the government housing units built during the war for war industry and shipyard workers. These were used by UC Berkeley after the war for student housing. A southbound train running to Emeryville is returning shipyard workers to their homes after their shift. At the end of the war, the Key System was offered this line, but since the line bypassed the actual city of Richmond, it was simply all torn out when the shipyard closed. For much more Bay Area history and more views of the Key System, including rides over the bridge rails, the building of the Bridge Yard, and the building of the Shipyard Railway, don't miss the Key System Scrapbook Part 2. This presentation is the complete story of the post-war years to the end in 1958. We bring a wealth of city scenes, of electric bridge units, and even some electric freight operation on city streets. Once the war ended, a flood of tempting new automobiles and the end of gasoline rationing would slowly drag Key System's bridge units and ridership down. The old orange and silver on the articulated bridge units was replaced with a new color scheme referred to as Fruit Salad. It indicated the new ownership by national city lines. This would help wind down the electric train service and usher in a complete bus takeover. Ride all the remaining lines and travel up into the picturesque residential foothills and past scenic Lake Merritt. Ride the A-Line through Emeryville, past industrial sections, through a declining downtown area, and out to its truncated end when Lake Merritt's dam was reconstructed. In this second volume, you'll notice more and more shiny new automobiles and city growth that brought a feeling of prosperity and independence of travel. With our animated maps, we review all the lines with beautiful scenes to further illustrate how the system was used. Special maps will indicate where items of interest were once located, including interlocking towers. Lines such as the F-Line were modified and extended when the competing IER line closed. This extension of the Key System helps support many of the IER's patrons that once used the tracks shown in red. The five former Sacramento Northern electric cars used on the F-Line lasted a few more years after the war, and we bring those scenes. The Santa Fe once ran down the city streets too, and this new post-war streamliner was a big hit compared to riding troop trains a few years earlier for many returning GIs. The SP Railroad displayed its new Shasta Daylight on former electrified tracks of Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley in 1949. As this articulated bridge unit operating on the F-Line approaches, notice the small open center door window. This was the only cooling relief for passengers on hot days. The passengers were sealed in other than that small airflow. This streetcar still wears its World War II blood drive paint scheme. The Key System's fleet of small streetcars were all replaced by buses by 1948. Even the insect-appearing flat motor pushing these trolleys into the scrap lines was itself scrapped. The long lines of streetcars were sold off, scrapped, and burned. A few streetcars and bridge units were rescued for history by museums. The five remaining principal heavy electric lines of A, B, C, E, and F ran until 1958 with declining service and cutbacks in maintenance that drove ridership down even faster. The best advertisement for buying a new automobile was riding one of these huge electric units on a hot summer day with no air conditioning or means of even opening the side windows. By 1958, the entire system was torn up and the bridge units met the same fate as the streetcars did 10 years earlier. A few bridge units were sold to Argentina and a few more made it to rail museums. The Western Railway Museum has restored a pair for operation. Don't miss the Key System Scrapbook Part 2 to relive a bygone era.