Car 798 of Duboce Yard first came to my attention during the holiday season of 2008. I bike past the yard every day on my way home from work, as many San Franciscans do. If you’re heading west, on the left is a mural marking the sights you see transversing the City. The Duboce Yard is one end of The Wiggle bike path, a series of right-angled turns that minimize the incline between Church Street, the Castro, and the Mission with the Panhandle, the Sunset, and the Richmond. Car 798 is usually an nondescript railcar, and if it’s due for the road there’s a lot of work to be done.
The railway car depot is off of Market, just as Buchanan begins its climbs up and down the city’s hills as it heads north. Trapped behind a black fence, Car 798 is only visible if you head straight at it, and although a few people walk the path between the head of Buchanan and the foot of Church Street, most of those who transverse it are commuting bicyclists.
What brought it to my attention a year ago was the destination board, listing the North Pole, and the wreath. I missed my chance to take a photo of it last year, and was pleased to find that it had returned this year. It took a week of mental reminders, but I eventually brought my camera on a ride.
The small irony of Car 798 is that, even though S.F. does experience colder winters than other large West Coast cities that shall go unnamed, it’s nothing less than a bit of holiday humor to imply that our slightly-below 50 degrees Fahrenheit winters have anything to do with the frigid cold of the North Pole.
Nevertheless, it’s hard not to appreciate that the Muni mechanics at Duboce take a bit of extra time to spruce up a car that doesn’t seem to have any intention of leaving the yard. However, its colors are red and white, which must give public transit fans from Tokyo to Amsterdam a thrill to think that Santa rides a standard gauge, and not a reindeer-pulled sleigh.