The bulk of this book is truly a field guide, organized by car number, giving detailed history of every streetcar and cable car in San Francisco's fleet.

It also has a history of trams in S.F. transit - the famed cable cars were truncated to their current routes, the book says, through the efforts of downtown interests who wanted more one-way auto streets.

The streetcars perished in 1982, only to rise again after the Chamber of Commerce approached then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein to have summer "trolley festivals" to attract tourism. The enthusiastic public response led to the creation of the F line along Market, which then expanded to an E-Embarcadero line that ran until the pandemic in 2020.

Downtown giveth, downtown taketh away.