| Phoenix Trolley Museum | |
| Location: | 1117 Grand Avenue, Phoenix, Arizona, United States |
| Type: | Railway museum |
| Established: | 1975 |
| Website: | http://phoenixtrolley.org |
The Phoenix Trolley Museum, incorporated as the Arizona Street Railway Museum, is a railway museum established in 1975, with an emphasis on preserving historical street cars in Phoenix, Arizona, USA. The museum is "dedicated to the preservation of original Phoenix trolley cars and memorabilia, and to showing their place in the history of America's fifth largest city."
The museum was located next to the Margaret Hance Deck Park on Interstate 10 in downtown Phoenix until December 2017. In 2016, the City of Phoenix declined to renew the museum's lease for another five-year period, and the Hance Park location was closed.[1] [2] [3]
In 2018, the museum relocated to a site in Phoenix's historic Grand Avenue Arts and Small Business district, along one of the earliest trolley lines in the city. The museum's volunteer board of directors is developing plans to renovate the existing vintage structure to house exhibits and offices, and to construct a new facility to house and refurbish trolleys under their stewardship. It is now raising the funds to do so.[4]
In 2019, the Phoenix Trolley Museum's board of directors and volunteers organized a "spruce up campaign" to improve the building's exterior and interior exhibit spaces, including a significant overhaul of its exhibits.
After a successful fund-raising campaign in 2020, the museum was able to purchase the Grand Avenue property it has been occupying since 2018.
In December 2020, local businessman Mike Bystrom contacted the museum asking if they were interested in a storage unit that appeared to have been built around the body of a street car.Upon research it was discovered that underneath an outer shell of sheet metal was in fact a street car thought to have been lost in the unfortunate trolley car barn fire in 1947 that destroyed all but the six street cars that were still out on runs late that night. Bystrom generously offered to donate the street car and pay to have it transported to the Grand Avenue site of the museum, where it sits today.