The New York Transit Museum

If you have used the subway system around New York, you'll understand how vital it is to getting around each of the different boroughs of the city. The subway was created in the early 1900's and if you have the time I recommend that you take the subway across to Brooklyn and learn all about how the subway was created.

As you can imagine, this was no small undertaking. When developing the subway, the engineers not only needed to work around the existing sewage, electrical and water systems that were already in place, underground but, they also needed to work around the complex steam heating system that, still to this day pumps hot steam to each house within the city limits keeping people warm in their homes during the bitterly cold winter months.

The museum takes a lot of care and effort to explain how they did it.

What I really loved about this museum is that it is located in an old subway station, so you enter the museum just like you would any subway station.

Bryan at the entrance to the New York Transit Museum.

Admission to the museum is cheap compared to the other museums around New York (approx. $7.00 per adult) and with this you not only learn all about the history of the subway system, you get to walk through all the different types of train cars that have used during the 100 years that the system has been running. It's so cool. You walk down onto one of the old platforms (located a floor below where all the history information is) and you can wander through and sit down inside each train car and take your time enjoying the look and feel of the different train carriages.

 

If you're staying in Manhattan, then yes, it is a little bit out of your way but, if you have an interest in trains, major  engineering accomplishments then this is the museum for you.

It is a very 'hands-on' museum. You can walk through and touch all the different turn-styles they have used since the subways inception and it is also a museum that is great for the kids. They can learn all about electricity by interacting with various displays in the exhibit.

An example of one of the turn-styles that were used. People used tokens to enter the subway system.

More turn-styles that were used across the various years that the subway has been running. It was only in 1994 that New York finally got rid of the 'token' system and moved to a refillable card 'swiping' system. 

I highly recommend this museum and will definitely be going back again to check out other parts of the museum that I did not get to.