Electric Transport Museum

The Electric Transport Museum (the Museo del Sistema de Transportes Eléctricos) is precisely the final resting place of all of those beautiful and almost forgotten electric tram cars from yesteryear. Opened just in 2006, it’s one of the best resources for understanding where and what the 20th century’s trams, trolleys, and streetcars looked like and where they may go in the future.

With a photographic record of the more than 100 years of electric service in the city, there are also collections of the  machinery, printed materials, plannings sketches and maps on the evolution of the services. These can be traced straight through to the new city trolybuses plying the streets of Mexico City even today.

A network of some 343 kilometers, 70% more than today’s Metro is at least recorded, if not exactly still in use. The collection includes a presidential tram used by General Alvaro Obregón, and the funeral carriages which once brought coffins to the cemetery.

The museum is within the Electric Transport System facility on the Avenida Municipio Libre in Iztapalapa. For all that, it also offers a bit better than a glimpse at how the city’s remaining electric vehicles function.

The San Andrés Tetepilco neighborhood, among the oldest in the city, is home to a wealth of ancient and colonial sites. Directly east of the Metro Portales, it’s a historical area and not terribly far off the beaten path. The museum brings you about the most charming of collections of this sort anywhere in the Valley of Mexico.