Thread 2056623

Since there's already a thread about Pacific Electric, I think I'd dedicate one to its younger Northern brother.

>>2056623 (OP)
Holy fucking shitballs I love the Key System so goddamn much
>dat bridge railway
>dem sleek aluminium bridge units
>dat neat art deco Transbay Terminal
In a way the Key System was even more glorious than the PE. Sure PE was more extensive and faster, but it didn't have an awesome bridge which it crossed, and an elevated track on one side and a street-running network on the other.

Having a perfectly good train system, dismantling it, and then spending billions of dollars remantling it is a classic American move

>>2056679
The transbay tube is two tracks so it could probably provide similar frequencies over the Bay to Oakland, but the streetcar sections would obviously be slower if they weren't elevated
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMRn44wtOT8

>>2056680
Continuous investment would of allowed progressively higher speeds on the bridge and further segregation of the streetcar sections, either with at-grade ROW or elevated or tunnel sections. Eventually it would have been very similar to BART just a bit slower but with better coverage, and for a fraction of the cost. Maybe even instead of having auto traffic on both decks of the bridge the rail line could of been four-tracked on the lower deck to expand capacity.

>>2056681
>would of
>could of

>>2056679
>perfectly good train system
It was losing money by 1948.

>>2056699
a man can dream tho
a man can dream

>>2056636
>ywn board a train straight to San Francisco from the Claremont Hotel

Would save me so much fucking time every time I go to the Bay Area on business (I stay at the Claremont because fuck San Francisco hotels, they're overpriced garbage).

>>2056680

Honestly I can understand the rational behind dismantling the streetcars (or at least consolidating them into a smaller number of lines in the most densely populated areas and converting the rest into bus routes) as automobile usage increased, but the Key System's Transbay routes should have been preserved.

>>2056715
Would have taken you 33 minutes by the 1954 timetable. Although the off-peak frequency of trains every 40-45 minutes has some room for improvement

>>2056623 (OP)

This might seem like a silly question but were the Key System trains ever coupled up to each other?

>>2057995
OP’s photo shows those articulated bridge units with couplers so they must have been MU’ed at some point, maybe during rush hour.

>>2057995
Bridge units (which were two cars each) were coupled together up to three (or four? units. Not sure). Trains of different lines were afaik never coupled together.