Key System Streetcars: Transit, Real Estate and the Growth of the East Bay

8.5x11", cloth with dust jacket, 480 glossy pages, maps, drawings, ephemera, history, routes, rosters, appendices, index, photos throughout. "A welter of extensive and competing streetcar lines in the East Bay of the San Francisco area gradually was merged into the Key Route. Primarily serving Oakland and Berkeley, the system also reached San Francisco when the Bay Bridge rail connection was completed. "The long, complex and fascinating history of the Key surface lines and their predecessors is very overdue for a book-length treatment." "Vernon Sappers and his long-time friend, Harre Demoro, had planned and worked toward a comprehensive history of the Bay Area's Key lines. They agreed that Demoro would cover the trans-Bay operation, and Sappers would do the East Bay lines. The Demoro effort was published (in two volumes) by Interurbans Press in 1985 (simply entitled The Key Route, though subtitled "Transbay Commuting by Train and Ferry"), but the Sappers work is only now being published through the efforts of the Bay Area Electric Railroad Association. "Mr. Sappers was renowned for his remarkable and immense collection of historic photos, and many of them are here, illustrating the operation that was perhaps closest to his heart."