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'Car Builders' craft The City's cable cars Carpenter Supervisor Jane Koski, Robert Harris and John Barberini, all members of Local 22, answer the question, “Car 51, where are you?” It’s right here in “the coop,” or lead-abatement enclosure, in Woods Carpenter Shop where San Francisco’s cable cars get repairs and total makeovers from the wheels up. "Car 51, where are you?" John Barberini’s laugh is an invitation, the sound of someone who enjoys life. The answer is right behind the Local 22 carpenter. Cable car 51, end to end with car 26, is in the coop. Both of these venerable San Francisco cable cars are in for major retrofits at the Woods Carpenter Shop, the Municipal Transportation Agency’s repair barn for the historic vehicles. The coop, Barberini explains, is a lead-abatement enclosure, a plastic-draped frame, a shop-within-a-shop that contains the dust and debris from the heavy work on the cars. Five union carpenters and a patternmaker, all Local 22 members, staff the main Woods shop, at the base of Potrero Hill a few blocks from Local 22. .
 A brand-new No. 15 and the crew that built it. .
"Part of what we do here," said Jane Koski, Woods’ Carpenter Supervisor and also a Local 22 member, "is maintain history. And not just the cable cars themselves—we’re preserving hand-crafting techniques that could be lost. Part of my job is to see they’re not lost."  Robert Harris, Local 22, routers the edge of a replacement bumper for one of the cars. The bumpers are laminated oak, covered with a ¼” steel plate that’s made by a blacksmith who works with Woods Carpenter Shop. “The bumper size had to be changed and improved in the 1930s,” Harris said, “when big trucks began to share the streets with the cable cars.”
Local 22 member Robert Harris has spent 29 years working on cable cars at Woods and at the car barn. He said, "Sure, we have more modern tools—routers and planers—and it may take less time with them." He pauses, standing next to two cable-car bumpers he’s shaping from huge blocks of laminated oak. "It’s all mortise and tenon, scarf joints, and there’s steaming the wood. … Well, either way it takes a long time." Koski, a carpenter with 30 years of experience but who’s been at Woods just since December 2008, agreed. "With these cars, you can’t do the standard project-management timeline because when you open them up, you never know what you’ll find." A window replacement, for example, may lead to new doors, too. The idea is to take care of each car, both aesthetically and physically, and keep it on the rails.  Patternmaker He Du, Local 22, learned the trade from his father who owned a foundry. The pattern shop makes all the metal fittings for the cars from the wheels and arm-rest brackets to the plaques on the wall. In addition, Du turns the uprights for the cars shown here.  Second-generation San Franciscan John Barberini, Local 22, spent 28 years as a stairbuilder before he came to the Woods shop three years ago. Here, he peers through the front-end panel of a car, a slightly curved framework of oak joined with mortise and tennon, like the rest of the woodwork in the cars.  Peter Cunha, Local 22, cuts out a floor section of Car 26, or 526 as it was numbered in the old days, from the Hyde and Mason line. The car was built in the late 1880s. The craftspeople at Woods most recently saw their time-tested skills and techniques celebrated in Car 15, which went out the door to the Powell Street rails on June 22. Car 15, which took about five years to build and cost $823,000, was the 12th new car the team has completed. "We build a new one only when an original car has to be taken out of service," Koski said. Now that the media hoopla surrounding No. 15 has subsided, the shop is back to business as usual. Cars 51 and 26 are next up for major rehabs, something a car typically gets every 40 years.  Harry Jew, Local 22, has worked in the Woods shop for 28 years. “Time flies by so fast,” he said, “but it’s still a job I like.” When Cunha calls Jeu a “master craftsman,” Jeu responds, “There are lots of good carpenters here.” It’s easy to see how the team works well together.  Peter Cunha, Local 22, has 11 years at Woods. Cunha says his background, which includes being a general contractor, an ironworker and an electrician, helps with this work: “You’ve got to be able to do it all when you work here.” Cunha was part of the team that built No. 15, The City’s new cable car. He crafted the ends and worked on the roof with Dave Valstad, Local 22. Inside No. 26, Peter Cunha lowers a circular saw onto the floor, carefully removing sections of plywood so he can get a look at the condition of the car’s support system. Around him, the scratched paint and stained leather handstraps dangling from the ceiling remind a visitor of the tens of thousands of riders who enjoy these cars every year—and have since 1873 when the first ones rolled up The City’s steep hills.  Today, the fare is $5.00 for a ride. When the cable cars were first installed in San Francisco in 1873, the original system cost about $85,000 to build. Cunha built the ends for No. 15, and worked on its roof with Dave Valstad, another Local 22 carpenter, who led the efforts on that car. Local 22 carpenter Dick Schmidt also worked on car 15, although he and Valstad usually work at the cable car barn. "Everybody learns from everybody else and their experience on these projects," Cunha said, pointing out the various aspects of No. 26, which was originally built in the late 1880s. In a special section of the shop, patternmaker He Du, Local 22, makes all the patterns for wheels, arm-rest brackets, plaques, the bronze bells—and more—for the cars. Molds for and samples of every conceivable metal part crowd the tables and shelves, and hang from the ceiling. Du learned the pattern-making trade from his father who owned a foundry. He’s been at Woods for two years now. "It’s still lots of fun," he said.  Inside these well-used and much beloved cars, a visitor can feel the ghosts of a million riders hanging from the straps, in the scratched paint and worn varnish of the seats, which are slatted so no one slips off the smooth benches on the hills and turns. Out on the floor, Cunha straightens his toolbox before he leaves for the day. Cunha credits Harry Jew, as "the master craftsman" who’s taught him many of the tricks and tips of the trade. Jew has worked at Woods for 28 years, and like the others has an "aw shucks" response to compliments. "There are a lot of good carpenters here," Jew said, but he does acknowledge that the work at Woods is "a lot of crafts rolled into one. It’s the carpenter trade, but a little different, too." The carpenters here have to know how to build the chassis, handle the I-beam undercarriage, do proper steam-bending, make a solid mortise-and-tenon or scarf joint, and so on. "We’re angling for a new title—a special classification," Cunha said. "We want to be ‘car builders.’"
 Barberini inspects the carlins-that’s cable car terminology for “rafters”- on car 51.
This team clearly likes what they do, individually and together. "We all come with our experience and our traditions," Koski said. "There’s the mastery of intensive joinery, and knowledge of the whole system, how to use shop and mill tools, working with very close tolerances, steam-bending, there’s the special terminology—and then, occasionally, there are the new techniques that make things a little easier. We all bring something particular to the shop." And that particular combination keeps the most famous cable cars in the world rolling down the right track, up and down The City’s vertical geography. Peter Cunha surveys the now-quiet shop. "It’s a pride and joy kind of job," he said.  “The cable system was designed to get the cars up the steep hills of San Francisco,” Harris said. “The technology of the car hasn’t changed much.” And why should it? Cable cars generate zero source-emissions, last for 100 years, and carry as many as a hundred people.  Laborers Union member George Washington loads some of the 700 track shoes that the Woods shop builds every month. Track shoes are one element of the three-part braking system for the cars. Made of clear, vertical-grain, kiln-dried Douglas fir, the shoes are changed every three days.
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