Cable Car End

The cable car turnaround you are standing near is a vital piece of the city's transit infrastructure. Because the iconic Powell line cars are single-ended, they have only one set of controls and a grip that faces forward, making them unable to reverse. To return to the downtown commercial core, the gripman and conductor must guide the vehicle onto a circular wooden platform built into the street. They then use sheer human effort to push and rotate the massive steel-framed platform until the car is facing the opposite direction. This manual process has remained essentially unchanged since the line first opened in eighteen eighty-eight. It serves as both a functional necessity for the transit system and a rare, living display of nineteenth-century engineering.