How do I get tickets to Boston Street Railway Association?

Tickets and current schedules are available on the operator's official website at http://www.thebsra.org.

Photo by N.D. Clark, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)

Boston Street Railway Association

BOSTON, MA

4.2· 6 Google reviews

Upcoming Events

No ticketed events are currently listed for Boston Street Railway Association. Many heritage operators publish schedules seasonally or run on regular open hours instead of dated events.

Check the operator’s website for current hours and special runs, or subscribe to event alerts and we’ll email you when something is scheduled.

About Boston Street Railway Association

Boston's transit-history community gathers around the BSRA. Monthly meetings, open to the public as well as members, pair a short business session with slide and video shows covering transit systems old and new from around the world. Members receive the bimonthly magazine Rollsign, browse the group's book-length Bulletins, and join occasional fan trips over the MBTA and to New England trolley museums — all of it supporting the restoration of a 1924 streetcar.

📍 BOSTON, MA 02118

🌐 Visit Website

History

The Boston Street Railway Association was founded in 1959 by ten railfans — nine of them in their twenties, plus one teenager — who that same year paid a junkyard $500 for Type 5 streetcar No. 5706, one of only four such cars remaining, with an eye toward future charter trips. In the decades since, the nonprofit has become best known for its publishing: the bimonthly transit news magazine Rollsign, now printed largely in full color, and a long-running series of 'Bulletins' that range from booklets to hardcover books on transit history in Boston and other New England cities such as Providence, Newport, and Fitchburg. Monthly membership meetings were held for many years at the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts at Tremont and Boylston streets and have since moved to the Midtown Hotel on Huntington Avenue. The group also charters occasional fan trips on the MBTA and organizes visits to trolley museums, and it is funded primarily through tax-deductible member and individual donations plus grants from other organizations.

The Trains

The association's signature artifact is Boston 'Type 5' streetcar No. 5706, built by the J.G. Brill Company in 1924 for the Boston Elevated Railway. The founding members rescued the car from a junkyard in 1959, when it was one of just four surviving Type 5s, and the BSRA has funded and managed its preservation and restoration ever since.