Zoo Train
When old engine #1294 arrived at the San Francisco Zoo.
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The San Francisco Zoo has been having some problems for… well, a good chunk of this millennium. Mismanaged funds, accidents, crumbling landmarks, declining attendance, no more elephants, lions leaving, animals getting loose, etc., with most of this detailed on its Wikipedia page.
It now has new leadership and maybe this is the dawn of better times, but the press and city officials have not been kind recently.
In the mid 1950s, when the city-owned facility was known as Fleishhacker Playground and Zoo, it was also having a rough time. The San Francisco News, known for its “Mr. Fixit” reporting on quality-of-life and beautification issues, alternated between scathing critiques and pitching improvement ideas for the 35-acre park.
One year the News led a national campaign to get the San Francisco Zoo its first elephant, Penny. The next it ran a series of articles on the frowziness of the zoo landscaping and the high cost of concessions. The newspaper felt oversight of the zoo was its necessary duty because, in its opinion, the mayor and supervisors weren’t doing the job:
“The plain fact is that the city government’s policy toward its single biggest attraction, the zoo, is to muddle through, to scrimp and to short-change.”
In 1956, when the city was selling off retired cable cars, one was moved to the zoo’s playground as a climbing structure. This seemed such a good idea—creative repurposing of city property was right up Mr. Fixit’s alley—that the News came up with a bigger proposal.
A 30-year-old Southern Pacific (SP) switch engine (#1294) and its tender were parked in the Ocean View neighborhood on spur tracks of the old Mainline.
The small locomotive’s job of switching and moving rail cars between tracks was no longer needed with the line’s obsolescence. The News saw the train as a rusting eyesore to the neighborhood but a giant opportunity for the zoo playground.
The News did all the bargaining. Southern Pacific agreed to donate the engine and tender. Sheedy Crane said it would do the move for free. Local Teamsters volunteered to pay for the addition of climbing bars and catwalks to the train.
The move was made on August 19, 1957. Dealing with the Ocean View kids the day of the relocation put to rest any doubts that the train would be popular with children. In every photo, some boy or girl is “supervising”.
While men prepared angled rails to winch the train onto a truck, 10-year-old Richard Craig of 256 Sickles Street (newspapers had no issue publishing everyone’s home address back in the day) rang the bell of the engine and yelled “This is going to be cool.”
The locomotive weighed 189,000 pounds and its tender another 50,000, but the move and placement in the zoo playground, including navigating the winding path down from the zoo’s old entrance on Sloat Boulevard, took only an hour.
Formal dedication, after the railings and stairs were installed, took place on November 29, 1957.
A plaque affixed on the side of the train recognized the Southern Pacific and the San Francisco News as making a gift to “San Francisco Children of All Ages.” Mayor George Christopher spoke and as kids swarmed the engine he predicted “Old 1294 is in for much rougher use in the future than in the past.”
Most play structures of my boyhood in the late 1960s and early 1970s were simple metal swing-sets and slides. To be able to stand on, crawl over, and pretend to operate a real vehicle like the Navy jet at Larson Park or the train at the zoo was a next-level experience.
The cable car and train engine were the first stop after entering from the old Sloat Boulevard entrance. After exhausting myself hanging and jumping from the train we’d usually hit Storyland across the path. My frustrated mother had a hard time getting me to move on and actually look at animals, the purported reason for our visits.
The train and cable car were removed in the early 1980s. Ocean fogs had eaten away at the 192os locomotive and rusty jagged edges were not friendly to clambering kids. The zoological society claimed “Ambulances were out there every weekend [for] some child getting cut or falling.”
Old 1294 was slicd up into scrap and hauled off in pieces in 1981.
For all its troubles, the San Francisco Zoo is a much more educational and entertaining place than in my youth. The landscaping is lusher, the food options go beyond hot dogs and bricks of pink popcorn, and who can complain about the awesome playground?
Animatronic dinosaurs are coming this summer and there may be pandas from China someday (we’ll see), but if those don’t bring the crowds, maybe the zoo should choo-choo-choose to return to an old-school option?
I’m not the only one who wants to write about the zoo train. John Martini’s 2016 article in Outside Lands magazine includes a photo of a zoo train visit by a fairly famous local rock band. My late friend Arnold Woods also created a post on OpenSFHistory about the move in 2021.
Woody Beer and Coffee Fund
I’m somewhere in the Canadian Rockies enjoying a beverage with Nancy (Wife of Woody—the “W.O.W.” initialism is very appropriate for her.)
But I will return and we can have a drink in... July, perhaps? Or August if you need more time to clear your calendar. Your drink is paid for by great people like Professora Em (F.O.W.)
Sources
“Little Engine Rides to Glory,” San Francisco News, August 19, 1957, pg. 11.
William Steif, “City Fiddles on Zoo Plans As Popular Park Crumbles,” San Francisco News, November 1, 1957, pg. 17.
Joseph B. Sheridan, “Dedication Rites Set for Old Locomotive,” San Francisco News, November 21, 1957, pg. 19.
Joseph B. Sheridan, “Old 1294 Whistles into Playground,” San Francisco News, November 29, 1957, pg. 13.
Russ Cone, “Zoo Choo-Chooses to Dump Engine,” San Francisco Examiner, June 7, 1981, pg. 37.