Go ahead. Pull the lever.

There’s a runaway trolley, a fork in the track, and no comfortable way out. Opening September 25, The Trolley Lab joins the Prindle Institute’s permanent collection as an interactive space where visitors build their own layouts with a wooden train set and work through variations on philosophy’s most famous puzzle. Who gets affected? Is doing something different from letting something happen? Does it matter whether you know the person on the tracks? A companion digital interactive walks you through each scenario and records your reasoning, and a response wall collects the whole community’s answers into a running record of how people think about fairness and consequence.

The Trolley Lab is open to visitors of all ages during regular Institute hours, with a digitally guided version always available. Facilitated discussion sessions can be scheduled for school and student groups.