Bachmann - 51-610-26 - Streetcar, Electric, Brill Trolley - San Francisco Municipal - Market Street

Road Name History: The SF Muni opened for business in 1912 when the city refused to renew the franchise of the Geary Street Park & Ocean Railway, a cable car line that ran down Geary. SF Muni converted the line to electric traction and soon began to build new lines through the city. Many of these routes competed with the United Railroads of San Francisco, an established streetcar line. In the 1940’s Muni began converting some routes to trolley busses and acquired the Market Street Railway (including the city’s historic cable car lines.)

In the 1950’s the city’s attention moved to the BART system that was intended for both local and longer distance service. Muni was left to wither while one planning disaster after another struck the BART system. Ultimately, the local service duties were re-allocated to Muni and some infrastructure intended for BART’s “local service” was transferred to them..

Today, the Muni system’s Market Street Railway brand includes a fleet of historic streetcars (mostly PCC cars) painted for historic streetcar lines from across the continent and around the world.

Brand/Importer Information: Bachmann Industries (Bachmann Brothers, Inc.) is a Bermuda registered Chinese owned company, globally headquartered in Hong Kong; specializing in model railroading.

Founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the home of its North American headquarters, Bachmann is today part of the Kader group, who model products are made at a Chinese Government joint-venture plant in Dongguan, China. Bachmann's brand is the largest seller, in terms of volume, of model trains in the world. Bachmann primarily specializes in entry level train sets, and premium offerings in many scales. The Spectrum line is the high quality, model railroad product line, offered in N, HO, Large Scale, On30, and Williams O gauge all aimed for the hobbyist market. Bachmann is the producer of the famous railroad village product line known as "Plasticville." The turnover for Bachmann model trains for the year ended 31 December 2006 was approximately $46.87 million, a slight increase of 3.36% as compared to 2005.