Climb aboard a 1918 double-decker at the Transit Museum’s free Bus Festival in Brooklyn

A wooden double-decker built in 1918 tops the lineup at the New York Transit Museum’s Bus Festival this Saturday, Sept. 19. The free show opens at 10 a.m. on the Brooklyn waterfront, on Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Emily Warren Roebling Plaza, and wraps up at 3:30 p.m.

Each year the outdoor event invites kids and transit fans to climb onto vintage vehicles and get a feel for how city buses once looked. The museum has been housed in a historic subway station for 50 years, but buses can’t fit inside, so once a year the collection rolls out to the water’s edge.

The oldest bus in the Transit Museum collection

No vehicle in the museum’s holdings is older than Bus 303, this year’s main attraction. Riders once boarded the dark lime green double-decker when it ran for the Fifth Avenue Coach Company. Now restored, it lets guests take a seat on its open top deck, stick their heads through the wooden windows and study its seven-spoke wheel rims up close.

That could leave Betsy, a double-decker dating to about 1930 and the favorite of recent festivals, sharing the spotlight. Buses with two levels were common in the city until the 1950s. Then traffic lights moved off the corners and were hung above the center of intersections, where taller buses ran into trouble.

Fishbowl, Blitz and a 9/11 survivor at Bus Fest

Bus 100, a 1959 model, stands out for its curved “fishbowl” windshield and parallelogram-shaped windows. Visitors born after the 1970s will likely recognize the Blitz Bus in its blue and white MTA paint. Every type of city bus that came after it was fitted with a wheelchair lift.

Also on the plaza is Pamela, which was damaged in the attacks on the World Trade Center. The museum is bringing it out because this month marked 25 years since 9/11. Repaired and returned to service in 2005, the bus now carries American flags and the words “Never Forget” on its side.

Regina Shepherd, the museum’s acting director, said the festival lets the museum put “these extraordinary vehicles into the spotlight” and welcome the public on board. There is no charge to attend.