NEW YORK CITY, N.Y.- The New York Transit Museum presents Show Me The Money - From the Turnstile to the Bank, a new exhibition showing how your money moves from fare box to deposit box.

Every day New Yorkers spend almost $9 million to ride city subways and buses. Ever wonder where that money goes?

MTA New York City Transit (NYCT) is the nation’s largest transportation system, serving over 7 million customers each day. The path our fare travels from the turnstile to the bank weaves its way through an interconnected complex of people and machines. This exhibit examines what happens to your two dollar fare when it leaves your wallet.

From 1951 to 2006 fare box receipts were processed by NYCT’s Department of Revenue at its Money Room in a once-secret location at 370 Jay Street in Brooklyn. Inside a heavily guarded vault, cashiers processed billions of dollars in currency and tokens collected by agents who traveled from station to station underground on Money Trains. The Money Room evolved over time with changes in technology. Tokens were introduced in 1953, replacing coins in turnstiles. Token vending machines helped alleviate congestion at booths. In the processing rooms, electric coin counters replaced manual ones, and at bus depots the fare box vacuum speeded money processing. In the 1990s, MetroCard and the Automated Fare Collection (AFC) system brought revenue collection into the digital age.

Today armored cars have replaced money trains and fares are processed at the new Consolidated Revenue Facility in Queens. Staffed by a team of 643 employees, this modern facility also handles revenue for MTA Bridges and Tunnels and MTA Long Island Rail Road. Revenue processing and MetroCard encoding are consolidated under one roof, and high speed mixed currency counters sort and strap money faster than the human eye can see.

In this exhibit, vintage and contemporary photographs are juxtaposed with video footage of the last Money Train ride, the old and new money processing facilities, and other aspects of the fare collection process. In a simulated money room, visitors will see objects from the museum’s permanent collection including token vending machines, coin counters and a real token booth you can enter to experience what it’s like to be a booth clerk. One of the last 2-car Money Trains to run in the subway system, complete with collection bins and counting tables, is displayed on the museum’s lower level, along with 18 other vintage trains from the museum’s collection.