Porto tram No. 189 works Market Street during the Trolley Festivals of the 1980s. This car is currently under restoration. Click here to donate to our Car Restoration fund.

Brill typically shipped its streetcars in "knocked down" form—kits really—that were easily assembled at their destination. One city that depended on Brill streetcars for more than half a century was Porto, Portugal, which was and is—as its name suggests—both a leading port city of the Iberian Peninsula, and the gateway to the fabulous region that grows Port grapes.

This car is actually a copy of the famous Brill design, built by Porto's own streetcar shops in 1929. Both Porto and the capital, Lisbon, ran Brill trolleys—and locally produced copies—throughout the Twentieth Century. Lisbon has lovingly restored and updated a few of its lines, especially those that twist and climb through the old Alfama district—one of the great streetcar rides in the world today! Porto, too, has retained a vintage line that still uses these cars.

But some of Porto’s old Brills—both tiny single-truck cars and somewhat larger (but still small) double-truckers—got scattered across the globe when the city cut lines in the 1980s. They were perfect for heritage trolley operations, since they were similar to streetcars that had run in many American cities (though, interestingly enough, never in San Francisco). Memphis, for example, now relies on several ex-Porto cars for its vintage streetcar line.

When the first San Francisco Historic Trolley Festival was planned in 1983, the Chamber of Commerce leased two ex-Porto single-truck cars from Paul Class, an Oregon streetcar entrepreneur. Their bouncy ride, beautiful interior woodwork and rattan seats made them very popular. But the cars were very tired mechanically, and their wood bodies were held together more by habit than anything else. Since the Festival was originally conceived as a one-time event, they were not intended to have a permanent home here. Indeed, one of the cars, No. 122 (a 1912 Brill kit), went to Dallas, where it operates today as part of the delightful McKinney Avenue heritage trolley line.

This car, No. 189, was brought back to San Francisco in 1984, bought by Muni, and operated in the remainder of the Trolley Festivals. In 1987, it joined the only other single-truck car in the fleet, No. 578-S, in a successful demonstration of the potential popularity of a waterfront streetcar line. The two antiques towed modern generators (to provide power in the absence of overhead wires) along the abandoned State Belt freight railroad tracks from the Ferry Building to Pier 39. The popularity of the trial run clinched the extension of the F-line along the waterfront.

Unfortunately, this car was completely neglected after the Trolley Festivals ended, and deteriorated badly. Market Street Railway volunteers performed some cosmetic maintenance to arrest the decline of the car, but it has not operated since 1987.

Good news arrived early in 2002, however. Muni’s world-class carpentry shop, which has focused primarily on cable cars, but has also done some excellent piecework for the historic trolley fleet—including new doors, cornerposts and other custom fabrication—is taking on the restoration of car No. 189’s wooden body, including the lengthening of its platforms to accommodate disabled riders.

It is hoped that soon this car will proudly return to the F-line for many years to come—a piece of the past from Porto performing its duty in another world-class port city.