The New York Transit Museum is celebrating 50 years of preserving and sharing the stories of mass transportation and the people who make it possible. Founded in 1976 as part of America’s Bicentennial, the Museum began as a temporary exhibition proposed by NYC Transit employees. Housed in a decommissioned 1936 subway station in Brooklyn, the exhibition was meant to last only a few months but became the largest museum in North America dedicated to mass transit and a beloved cultural institution.

Over the decades that followed, the Museum grew alongside the city it serves. What began as a grassroots effort by transit workers evolved into a permanent institution, expanding its archives to over 1 million objects today, launching educational programs for thousands of students each year, and introducing beloved traditions like Nostalgia Rides and the annual Bus Festival. From its single station in Brooklyn, the Museum expanded its reach into Grand Central Terminal and across the five boroughs, while continuing to preserve the vehicles, objects, and stories that define New York’s transit system.

Today, the New York Transit Museum connects New Yorkers and visitors alike to transit history through exhibitions, educational programs, and one-of-a-kind experiences. Throughout its anniversary year, the Museum will mark this milestone with special events, new exhibitions, a citywide scavenger hunt, and historic train rides that honor transit’s past, engage the present, and look toward the future of how New York moves.

To explore the Museum’s history, visit the digital exhibition Our Journey: The New York Transit Museum at 50.

50th anniversary programming will kick off on Saturday, April 18 as part of Members Appreciation Month with the Anniversary Member Express Nostalgia Ride. Vintage BMT Standards, manufactured from 1914 to 1924, will depart from the Museum’s historic Court Street station platform and travel on tracks that once served the Brooklyn Manhattan Transit (BMT) and Independent (IND) subway companies. The trip launches the Museum’s milestone year with a ride through the transit system that inspired it. Tickets are available to Museum members only and are now on sale.

-via Press Release