Pittsburgh's first public transit passenger boarded a horse-drawn streetcar on Penn Avenue on Aug. 6, 1859.

The rider's identity likely is forever lost, as is whether he asked the driver "Does this horse go to Oakland?"

But much about that event, and the 150 years of transit since then, will be celebrated this week in a special exhibit at the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum.

Starting Thursday, visitors to the museum in Washington County will get a rare look at the inside of a horse car similar to the one that plied Penn Avenue and Butler Street in 1859.

They also will ride on a Port Authority "streamliner" streetcar that operated in the South Hills through 1999 and view 150 years of photographs memorializing the region's often tumultuous transit history.

In the Trolley Display Building, they'll see 32 streetcars of varied vintage, meticulously restored right down to the period advertisements along their ceilings and the "spitting prohibited" signs.

The anniversary exhibit was prepared by Ed Lybarger, the museum's archivist and resident font of transit facts.

"From what we can tell from the newspaper accounts, it was a nickel," Mr. Lybarger said of the first streetcar fare. The horse cars replaced "glorified stagecoaches" called omnibuses, he said, and operated for 64 years on city streets until the last horse-drawn streetcar, along Sarah Street on the South Side, went out of service in 1923.

The museum's horse car, Pleasant Valley 101, manufactured in New York in the 1870s, was made of wood and featured oil lamps for lighting; an elaborate, ventilated ceiling with cross-members that could be grasped by standing passengers; and posterior-unfriendly wooden benches along both sides.

There was no heat. Straw was spread on the floor in winter to provide some warmth for passengers.

The driver sat on a platform in front completely exposed to the elements, controlling the car with verbal commands to the horses and a hand brake. Horses worked five-hour shifts, compared with the driver's 12- to 14-hour days.

"You didn't have a lot of creature comforts," said Scott Becker, the museum's executive director.

The horses began to be pushed to pasture with the first appearance of electric cable cars along Fifth Avenue in 1888 -- a less-expensive, cleaner and better-smelling technology that nonetheless required an elaborate underground pulley system.

The first electric streetcars powered by overhead wires debuted here in March 1890, when the Second Avenue Passenger Railway Co. extended service through Hazelwood to Glenwood, tracking the city's outward population expansion.

"The electric car took over by storm," Mr. Lybarger said. "Within a couple years all but the one line on the South Side had been converted."

Four times as fast as the horse cars, electric streetcars fueled the expansion of Pittsburgh and other cities by allowing people to live much farther from their workplaces.

Some eight to 10 private companies operated service, but economic woes ultimately brought about a merger that left Pittsburgh Railways Co. as sole operator starting in 1902.

The streetcar era peaked in 1918, when Pittsburgh Railways had more than 600 miles of track, 2,000 cars and 99 routes. By comparison, Port Authority's rail network today is 25 miles, 83 vehicles and five routes.

In 1936, streetcars developed by the Electric Railways Presidents' Conference Committee began to appear on Downtown streets. They would come to be known as PCC cars or streamliners, and would have a long run here.

"It was a serious attempt to compete with the automobile," Mr. Lybarger said. The rail cars could accelerate faster than automobiles and were built with comfortable padded seats. Pittsburgh Railways bought 666 of them.

Then, as now, public transit struggled with financial instability. For much of its life, Pittsburgh Railways was in bankruptcy, and complaints about service, equipment and overpaid drivers spanned the decades while echoing today.

The 1950s brought a decline in streetcar ridership; an end to production of PCC cars; and abandonment of several routes. Increased automobile production and suburban growth sent former passengers to their own cars, and service was disrupted by three lengthy labor strikes.

"People said, 'I'm not going to do this anymore. I'm going to buy an automobile,' " Mr. Lybarger said.

With Pittsburgh Railways and some 30 independent bus companies struggling and unable to invest in modern equipment, the state Legislature created the Port Authority and directed it to acquire the private operators -- a process that spanned nearly eight years.

The Port Authority began transit operations in March 1964 with a 30-cent base fare that has since grown to $2.

Streetcar service continued to dwindle until only a few South Hills-Downtown routes remained.

In 1985, the first sections of the modernized Light Rail Transit system opened, including the subway that removed streetcars from congested Downtown streets. The rebuilt Beechview line opened two years later.

The last service run for the old PCC streetcars came on Labor Day weekend 1999 on the Drake Shuttle route.

Car No. 4004, which made the final trip, now ferries museum patrons from the visitor center to the Trolley Display Building. Part of the ride is upon track laid in 1903 for the Washington, Pa.-to-Canonsburg interurban route, later extended to Pittsburgh. Part is upon track removed from the Port Authority's Overbrook line when it was rebuilt early this decade.

Although transit here is well-removed from its heyday -- about 65 million riders annually, down from a peak of 280 million in 1947 -- Mr. Becker sees indications of a resurgence.

"Look at [gasoline prices] a year ago. That's going to happen again. Look at congestion -- the Parkway West is not going to widen at the tunnels, not in our lifetimes. Parking spaces Downtown, pollution ... ."

"Unless we find some kind of genuine alternative to gasoline, I see the concept of reurbanization happening," said Mr. Lybarger.

"It's already happening," Mr. Becker said.

So visitors to the museum, in their encounter with the past, might also be catching a glimpse of the future.

For more about the museum, including directions, visit www.pa-trolley.org or call 724-228-9256. The celebration of 150 years of Pittsburgh transit will take place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday through Sunday. Tours begin at 15 minutes past each hour. Admission is $9 for adults, $8 for those 62 or older and $5 for ages 3 to 15. A family rate of $30 covers up to two adults and four children.