San Francisco Railway Museum & Gift Shop

The San Francisco Railway Museum packs a great experience into a compact space, just across from the famous Ferry Building. The museum is designed to complement the historic rail vehicles of the F-line and cable car lines by serving as an information and interpretation center for them. San Francisco is one of the few places in the world where you can get the actual experience of riding vintage rail transit in its “natural habitat” — the rumble of the motors under your feet, the swaying of the car itself, the smell of the brakes. Before or after you take that magical ride on the “museums in motion,” visit our museum to make your experience complete. What we offer at the museum is a celebration of San Francisco’s rail transit history, focused on exploring the positive impacts streetcars and cable cars have made on the quality of urban life in this great city.The museum features a full-sized exact replica of the motorman’s platform of a 1911 San Francisco streetcar, where kids of all ages can experience what it was like to be at the controls. You’ll also find unique historic artifacts, illustrative and informative displays, rarely seen archival photography, and audio-visual exhibits that use 21st century technology to bring rail transit in the 19th and 20th centuries to life.