Though Bostonians may love to hate on the MBTA, there’s something captivating about its history. It is, after all, the oldest subway in the country. So when I found out the City of Boston Archives was digitizing a newly donated collection of elevated transit photos, I jumped at the chance to get a look at them and find out who donated them and why.

Boston’s subway system traces its roots back to 1897 but it’s use of streetcars and railways goes back even further. The photos obtained by the Archives are a grab-bag of train, station, construction, demolition and commuter foot traffic shots, to name just a few.

They were donated by Frank Cheney, who saved them from being destroyed during the late 1970s, early 1980s. When rail employees learned of their imminent destruction, and knew full well of Cheney’s affinity for transit history, they knew he would help preserve them.

“He’s spent a considerable amount of time getting them into repositories who have an interest in preserving transit history and making transit photos available to the public,” said Marta Crilly, archivist for the City of Boston. “We received the donation of the Elevated photos earlier this year.”

Now Crilly and her constituent history buffs are in the process of uploading each of the photos online for everyone to enjoy. It’s more than just shuffling the images through a scanner, though. Often times the pictures are found to be without labels or descriptions and the archivists are set off on a research mission to find out who took them and when.

Once that’s completed, the archivists must organize and arrange them in such a manner that they’re easily accessible online to folks like you and me.

“We often date things by looking at cars, the way people are dressed, movie posters, the price of goods in shop windows, etc,” added Crilly. “For locations, we have atlases and maps we use, and we check photos against photos that we already have. We also sometimes post a photo on Twitter and Facebook and see if any of our followers recognize the location.”

Take a look at the photos below and see if you can identify any of the stations and locations. Anyone who does will win the greatest prize of all: A lifetime of respect and street cred from the BostInno brass.

For more photos from the Boston City Archives, check out their online Flickr album here.