At least eight BART train cars may receive a second life as a part of BART’s Legacy Fleet Decommissioning project.

Some of the cars will be used to train local firefighters, while others may become a time capsule fit with a retro video game arcade. And if all goes to plan, several others may be preserved in a railway museum for future generations to admire. 

The cars were given out for free — shipping and handling not included — to organizations and business owners who could clearly demonstrate how the cars would be used, how the cars would ultimately be disposed of, as well as how they would be used to benefit the Bay Area community at large, said San Francisco BART spokesperson James Allison. 

“We realized that BART plays an outsized role in terms of the public perception of the Bay Area,” Allison said. “It would be just a shame to scrap all these old cars that have been running for 50 years and unceremoniously grind them up into beer cans or whatever they were going to be.” 

From a pool of 20 proposals, eight were ultimately chosen, Allison said, adding that BART is “confident” its awardees will make their creative visions a reality. Awardees include the Western Railway Museum, the Contra Costa County Fire Protection District, Arthur Mac’s Tap and Snack and the Oakland Athletics.

The Western Railway Museum in Suisun City hopes to build a Rapid Transit History Center — a mock BART station that will house three legacy cars and tell the history of BART and its technology — and is currently soliciting donations for the project, which will cost anywhere from $3 million to $4 million, said Ryan Blake, a Western Railway Museum board member who is helping head the project. 

“The idea of seeing these cars go is kind of sad,” Blake, a lifelong BART rider, said, noting that the creation of BART transformed the Bay Area and especially Contra Costa County. “It’s important for me to see them preserved for future generations to learn from.”

Throughout the next several years, the Contra Costa Fire Protection District will use the car as a prop at its training grounds in Concord, according to an email statement from Contra Costa County Fire Protection District Assistant Chief and Fire Marshal Chris Bachman. The car will be used alongside a platform and extra rails to imitate rescue scenarios that might be encountered at BART stations, he added. 

Not all of the train cars will be used for serious matters, however. 

Arthur Mac’s Tap and Snacks, an Oakland-based restaurant that derives its namesake from MacArthur BART Station, plans to transform the train into an “early 90’s time capsule” featuring a dining area for guests, a children’s play area and even a retro arcade, said co-owner Adam Stemmler in an email. 

The goal, Stemmler noted, is to preserve as many of the original fixtures in the train as possible. It’s especially important to both Stemmler and his business partner, who grew up in Oakland and would frequently take BART into the city to skateboard as a teenager during the early ’90s. 

Likewise, the Oakland A’s will retrofit one of the legacy cars and transform it into both a beer garden and museum celebrating the history of transit and sport in the East Bay, said Erica George, spokesperson for the A’s, in an email. 

Allison, in particular, is excited that the A’s will be receiving one of the BART cars and putting it on display at its ballpark. After all, he’s long been a “little jealous” that the Giants have had a cable car on display at Oracle Park in San Francisco.