December 2025 Version of the Cable Car Home Page -- December 12, 2025

I just put the December 2025 version of my Cable Car Home Page on the server:

http://www.cable-car-guy.com/

It includes some new items:

1. Picture of the Month: Santa and friends will ride a cable car down Powell Street to the Emporium. "His cable car reaches Powell and Market at 11 a.m." (Source: San Francisco Examiner, 1949-10-28).
2. With Christmas coming, it's a good time to visit the late Joe Lacey's article Christmas on the Cables, and the Decorated Cable Cars page. Added a photo of Santa riding atop a cable car and a 1952 Emporium ad about the 1950 Santacade to Christmas on the Cables. Also Santa's Cable Car coming to Hyde and Beach. Cable car Christmas decorations celebrated their 20th anniversary.
3. Added News and Chronology items about Santa's Cable Car, service issues, the Merry Days of Muni Holiday Collection and the last day of San Francisco's Breda cars
4. On the Kansas City page: A promotion for the opening of the KC Streetcar's Holiday Jam

Ten years ago this month (December 2015):

1. Picture of the Month: Cable car 504 decorated as Santa's sleigh. (source: Trolley Topics, December, 1950)
2. With Christmas coming, it's a good time to visit Joe Lacey's article Christmas on the Cables, and the Decorated Cable Cars page. On the Christmas on the Cable page, Iddded a new image to Christmas on the Cables, showing car 504 decorated as Santa's sleigh. On the Decorated Cable Cars page, added Val Lupiz photos of Powell Street Car One decorated for Christmas, 2015. We should all thank Val Lupiz and his family and Friends who decorate cars every year.
3. On the More MSR Photos page: The Fate of the Old Sacramento and Clay St. Cable Car #16 by Stephen Brown
4. Added News item about Muni closing almost two blocks of lower Powell Street to automobile traffic

Twenty years ago this month (December 2005):

1. Picture of the Month: An invitation which Val Lupiz designed for the Cable Car Division's 2005 luncheon for Senior Citizens.
2. On the Decorated Cable Cars page: The luncheon invitation
3. On the San Francisco page: A new page about Motorized Cable Cars. Notes from Walter Rice and Val Lupiz on Cal Cable 61/62
4. Also on the San Francisco page: Thanks to Jack Tillmany, item about the movies Fools, part of which was shot in the cable car barn, and Fog Over Frisco, a 1934 movie with glimpses of cable cars.
5. On the Muni page: Thanks to Ray Long, a photo of 524 running on Broadway in Los Angeles for a 1949 Shriners parade
6. On the More MSR Photos page: Val Lupiz found a postcard of an MSR cable RPO car
7. On the Cable Car Transfers, Tickets, Tokens and Signage page: Thanks to Walter Rice, a TWA poster
8. On the New York/New Jersey page: Two 1886 newspaper articles about the first cable car line in Brooklyn, New York. WANTS TO USE THE CABLE, about a request for permission to use cable traction and CABLE ROAD/The Aldermen Inspect the New York Variety, about a junket to inspect a Manhattan line. Also an 1893 article, The Passing of Richardson, about the death of Brooklyn Cable Company promoter William Richardson
9. Added News items about new Powell Street cable car book signing and a meltdown on the Hyde Street line. Also added Nick Kibre photo to the item about Cal Cable car 59 in New Orleans
10. Added Bibliography items: Obituaries for Grimes Poznikov, Chester Smith, and Guillermo P Mendoza, Sr. Also a report of a 1980 publicity stunt

In January 2024 I started on a long overdue process of cleaning things up on my site. I started with the development pages. Actually, I guess I started the year before with making most thumbnails 200 pixels instead of 100.

Coming in January 2026: On the Cable Tramways in Australia and New Zealand page: More about Dunedin, New Zealand's Roslyn Tramway, the first Hallidie-type cable tram line outside of San Francisco.

The Cable Car Home Page now has a Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/CableCarHomePage/

The Cable Car Home Page also has an Instagram page:
https://www.instagram.com/cable_car_guy/

Joe Thompson
The Cable Car Home Page (updated 01-December-2025)
http://www.cable-car-guy.com/
San Francisco Bay Ferryboats (updated 31-October-2024)
http://www.cable-car-guy.com/ferry/
Park Trains and Tourist Trains (updated 31-October-2025)
http://www.cable-car-guy.com/ptrain/
The Pneumatic Rolling-Sphere Carrier Delusion (updated spasmodically)
http://cablecarguy.blogspot.com
The Big V Riot Squad (updated obsessively)
http://bigvriotsquad.blogspot.com/