The San Francisco Railway Museum welcomes a wide variety of visitors, some curious about what we do, some well versed on the subject, and some with a specific purpose.
Among our recent visitors was a group of artists called Urban Sketchers: San Francisco Bay Area,who spent a couple of hours making illustrations of scenes in the museum, two of which you can see on their website. Lovely renderings of our old time transportation artifacts.
Visiting the museum on a regular basis in the rainy season is the local group Walking in San Francisco For Health and History. Their tours on rainy days consist of visits to 6 different free museums in the downtown area over a 6 hour period. The schedule for their walking tours of San Francisco historical sites and including its movie history, can be found here.
Members of the Elsewhere Philatelic Society frequently drop by to visit and pick up their highly prized stamp to add to their passports. For more information about this creative, artistic and mysterious group, check out their website.
School groups of all ages often visit. Students in ESL (English as a Second Language) classes find answers in the museum to the transit questions on their worksheets, and practice their new language by asking related questions of the museum staff. Grade school groups learn the difference between streetcars, cable cars and buses, and the basics of how electric traction works. Needless to say, the high point of their visit is playing operator and conductor in the recreated 1911 streetcar platform in the back of the museum. Bell-ringing is encouraged!
As a team building activity, a number of companies in the neighborhood will occasionally hold a scavenger hunt with our museum holding one of the clues. Small groups come in and comb the space looking for the answer to their quest, often enlisting staff for photos or historical help in solving their puzzle.
Senior groups arrive at the museum eager to relive a part of their lives long gone – the San Francisco of their youth – venues and landmarks seen on film, in exhibits and in our display cases. We show them how the motorman and conductor operated the streetcars of the early 20thcentury in our streetcar platform, share with them the history and a demonstration of the first traffic signal in use in San Francisco in the 1920s, and show videos of the recreational destinations of yesterday and the streetcars that got you there.
For group visits, we ask that you call ahead so we can have adequate staff available, and are able to provide your group with a quality tour. The museum number is 415/974-1948.
