How clever mechanics keep 50-year-old BART trains running: Windows 98, eBay, and scraps

When BART first carried passengers, the country was sending astronauts to the moon. The Apollo-era trains were symbols of a generation barreling toward a space-age future complete with carpeted floors and a seat promised to every passenger.

That was 1972, when BART was state of the art. But half a century later, as the agency celebrates its 50th anniversary this month, many of those same silver-and-blue trains are still chugging through the Bay Area. And keeping them running - even in the country's technology capital - requires a special breed of ingenuity.

BART mechanics rely on Frankensteined laptops operating with Windows 98, train yard scraps and vintage microchips to keep Bay Area commuters on the rails.

These stories are a dime a dozen, and serve to illustrate there's a lot more outdated tech out there in our daily lives than we think. On the flipside, that's some decent job security for the engineers and maintenance crew involved.