Transit Museum in NYC shares MTA history, interactive exhibits

• Since the museum is inside a former station, the entrance is just like any other entrance to a below-ground subway station. There is also a handicap-accessible entrance, but this is the main entrance.

  In 2015, the museum had a record year with 170,000 visitors, Asborno said.

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• On the original platform and tracks of the station, the museum features vintage trains that were used starting in 1904. The train doors are open so people can go inside.

  Asborno said there are also vintage buses, but they are too large to be shown at the museum. They are kept in various MTA bus depots and brought out for special occasions, such as the annual Bus Festival in September.

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• Take a step back to 1904 by walking through the oldest trains at the museum. The trains were used on the elevated tracks at the time, Asborno said. They are made of wood, which makes them lighter and more functional on elevated tracks but not practical for underground tracks.

  These trains only had doors at either end of the cars, and at each stop, the gates had to be manually opened by an operator on each car. The operators communicated with the conductor using bells on each car to let him know he could start the train again.

  The term straphangers, used to describe commuters, comes from the straps that hung from the top of these original cars.

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• There are many opportunities for pictures at the Transit Museum, whether inside the trains, a bus or ticket booth (above). Asborno said one of the priorities of the museum is to be interactive. “It’s really important for us to allow people to take a step back in time,” she said.

  The Transit Museum is open Tuesday through Sunday. Admission is $7 for adults and $5 for children and senior citizens.

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New York’s Transit Museum is in the former Court Street station on the corner of Boerum Place and Schermerhorn Street in Downtown Brooklyn.

The station opened in 1936, but closed 10 years later because it wasn’t used enough, explained Regina Asborno, director of the museum. There were plans at the time to eventually connect the station to the Second Avenue line in Manhattan, but that never happened.

There was a shuttle train that operated at Court Street, but it only brought passengers to one other station about three blocks away, so it wasn’t necessary to keep. It was turned into a museum in the summer of 1976.

Scroll down to find out what you can see at the underground museum.