About the Museum > Museum History
Museum History
Since 2008, the Transportation Museum has been a unique, one-day event for toddlers, adults, and everyone in between. Each year, visitors are treated to interactive and educational exhibits related to all kinds of transportation, from the Transcontinental Railroad and projects to solve Bay Area traffic to programming miniature robots and solving an Amtrak-themed escape room.
Museum History
As a young child, museum director Andrew Mancini loved transportation of all kinds, especially trains. In fact, at the age of five, he had memorized all of the stations on the CalTrain line and knew all of the train engine numbers.
As a way to share his love for, and knowledge of, transportation with friends, family, and neighbors, Andrew created The Transportation Museum at the age of five. The museum, like those in subsequent years, occurred on a single day during the summer at Andrew's house. Early exhibits included displays of the schedules of every Bay Area transit route, organized on the family sofa; learning about the R.M.S. Titanic by allowing guests to send their own Morse code messages; and slot car racing at the "Grapefruit 500," a track set up on the cover of the hot tub in Andrew's backyard.
In 2013, Andrew wrote hand-written, personalized letters to transit agencies in the 40 largest cities in the U.S. and each transit agency in California and Nevada. Over 75 percent of these organizations wrote back, sending in not just the schedules and maps that were requested, but also fun items — chapstick, Yo-Yo toys, and rain ponchos — branded with their logo, forming the foundation of what is today the museum collection.
About the Museum > Museum History
About the Museum > Frequently Asked Questions
Museum History
Frequently Asked Questions
We'll admit that The Transportation Museum isn't your typical museum! It's a one-day event held annually featuring interactive and educational exhibits related to all kinds of transportation, from historical displays (like the Pony Express or the Transcontinental Railroad) to those looking toward the future (solving Bay Area traffic and traveling to Mars). If it's your first time visiting the museum or you're interested in a refresher on what to expect, read answers to common guest questions.
What are the exhibits like?
Each of the museum exhibits are different, but each year's museum brings between 10 to 12 brand-new exhibits to the public. Each exhibit combines both educational components and interactive activities, so every display can be enjoyed by both kids and adults. For example, in the Float Your Boat exhibit at the museum in 2016, guests learned the science behind how boats float and discovered what buoyancy and water displacement is. Then, guests worked to build a boat out of LEGOs that could carry cargo containers while remaining afloat. In an exhibit at the museum in 2019, visitors programmed miniature robots through a San Francisco-themed obstacle course to learn, hands-on, how self-driving cars function. These two exhibits are just a couple of examples of the educational and interactive combination present at each of the museum's displays.
Since 2008, the Transportation Museum has been a unique, one-day event for toddlers, adults, and everyone in between. Each year, visitors are treated to interactive and educational exhibits related to all kinds of transportation, from the Transcontinental Railroad and projects to solve Bay Area traffic to programming miniature robots and solving an Amtrak-themed escape room.
Museum History
As a young child, museum director Andrew Mancini loved transportation of all kinds, especially trains. In fact, at the age of five, he had memorized all of the stations on the CalTrain line and knew all of the train engine numbers.
As a way to share his love for, and knowledge of, transportation with friends, family, and neighbors, Andrew created The Transportation Museum at the age of five. The museum, like those in subsequent years, occurred on a single day during the summer at Andrew's house. Early exhibits included displays of the schedules of every Bay Area transit route, organized on the family sofa; learning about the R.M.S. Titanic by allowing guests to send their own Morse code messages; and slot car racing at the "Grapefruit 500," a track set up on the cover of the hot tub in Andrew's backyard.
In 2013, Andrew wrote hand-written, personalized letters to transit agencies in the 40 largest cities in the U.S. and each transit agency in California and Nevada. Over 75 percent of these organizations wrote back, sending in not just the schedules and maps that were requested, but also fun items — chapstick, Yo-Yo toys, and rain ponchos — branded with their logo, forming the foundation of what is today the museum collection.
Andrew Mancini
Planning and developing better transportation systems has long been a passion for Andrew Mancini. Early efforts to share his love of public transportation led to the founding of The Transportation Museum, which ran in the San Francisco Bay Area for 12 years. Since studying Urban Planning at Stanford University, Andrew has used his interest in public policy and transportation to shape urban planning decisions in the Portland, Ore., area.
From memorizing the details of every SamTrans route, to driving to local Caltrain stations to watch bullet trains fly past, Andrew has many memories of his interest for transportation at a young age. It was this passion — in the summer of 2008, when Andrew was five years old — that led him to create the first Transportation Museum. For 12 years, community members, transportation fans, and elected officials attended the museum, exploring hands-on, engaging exhibits designed new for each year’s event.
Today, Andrew is an incoming transportation analyst for the urban planning firm Kittelson and Associates, based in Portland, Ore. Previously, he has worked for SamTrans, helping to increase youth ridership and reduce barriers for first-time transit riders. As an intern at the Missouri Department of Transportation, he worked to facilitate multimodal transit connections, evaluate grant proposals, and coordinate the design and distribution of Amtrak’s first printed timetables in 6 years. He has also interned for the engineering firm Kimley–Horn, where he developed transit plans, calculated cost estimates for pedestrian and bicycle improvements, and conducted GIS-based map analysis for counties and municipalities in the South Florida region. As an intern for Brightline West, he supported the company’s efforts to bring high-speed rail to the Los Angeles–Las Vegas corridor, helping to develop a system-wide risk analysis, identify engineering hazard areas, compile local market and tourism data, and revise the company’s public outreach strategy.
Andrew is a graduate of Stanford University, with a degree in Urban Planning and minors in Data Science and Chinese. He completed his honors thesis on a local transit village project, studying how the proximity to a major transit center influenced ridership among residents of the development. When Andrew isn’t studying urban policy, he can be found reminiscing about his days walking backwards as a campus tour guide, practicing trombone, or rooting for the New York Mets. He has traveled across the U.S. on the train for a month and survived three days of a “hard seat” train service to Xinjiang, China. It is also one of his life goals to visit every Old Spaghetti Factory restaurant in the U.S., Canada, and Japan. He has been featured on Canada’s 60 Minutes, CBC’s As It Happens, and other news stations for the journey, which currently stands at 59 of the 62 worldwide.
Andrew visiting the San Francisco Railway Museum in 2008, 2016, and 2025.
