Daniel Lawrence Lu visits San Francisco’s Muni Heritage Weekend—historic streetcars, museum cars, and notes on transit nostalgia and the city’s working rail heritage.

Muni heritage weekend

I went to San Francisco for Muni Heritage Weekend 2026! I stood by the tracks for three hours with my line scan camera, scanning trams.

Tram pics are freely licensed under CC-By-SA 4.0 (I’ve also uploaded a bunch to Wikimedia Commons). Eight of these photos are also available as large metal prints.

1 No. 1: Muni Streetcar 1 (1912)

Muni No. 1 is the first publicly owned big city streetcar in the US. Before then, all streetcars were privately owned. It’s pretty cool!

2 No. 162: Muni (1914-1950s)

Muni No. 162 started out from 1914 and served until 1958. It’s making its first Muni Heritage Weekend appearance since a 2014 collision. Sorry, there was a car in the background and someone bumped my camera, causing some vibrations.

3 No. 233: Blackpool Boat Tram (1934)

The Blackpool boat tram is known for looking like a boat with its open top design.

4 No. 496: Melbourne Tram (1928)

The Melbourne tram comes from Melbourne, Australia. Like No. 162, it is green.

5 No. 578: Dinky (1896)

Muni No. 578 is probably the oldest one. It looks like a cable car but it is electrically powered rather than being powered by a cable.

Note that up until 1909, Divisadero Street used to be called Devisadero Street, so it’s a period-correct spelling, not a typo.

6 No. 1815: Milan Peter Witt (1928)

The Milan tram was designed by Peter Witts so that it has more doors for rapid boarding.

I didn’t get a good line scan photo of this despite three attempts, which failed due to: out of focus, occluded by car, slightly out of focus and has a weird shadow on it. However, I did get a great pic with Pier 1 in the background.

7 Other PCC streetcars

8 Random vehicles

9 Behind the scenes

Here are two pics of me taken by my friend Daniel Du. Our names are coincidentally similar but there is no relation lol.