diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 2ff94136..8244d0dc 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -101,9 +101,13 @@ To release the package with GitHub Actions, you can follow these steps:
 
 # How to run ALTRIOS
 
-With your activated Python environment with ALTRIOS fully installed, you can run several scripts in `ALTRIOS/applications/demos/`.
+With your activated Python environment with ALTRIOS fully installed, you can download the demo scripts to the current working directory inside of a `demos/` folder with:
+```python
+import altrios as alt  
+alt.download_demo_files()
+```
 
-You can run the Simulation Manager through a multi-week simulation of train operations with `ALTRIOS/applications/demos/sim_manager_demo.py` by running `python sim_manager_demo.py` in `ALTRIOS/applications/demos/`. This will create a `plots` subfolder in which the plots will be saved. To run interactively, fire up a Python IDE (e.g. [VS Code](https://code.visualstudio.com/Download), [Spyder](https://www.spyder-ide.org/)), and run the file. If you're in VS Code, you can run the file as a virtual jupyter notebook because of the "cells" that are marked with the `# %%` annotation. You can click on line 2, for example, and hit `<Shift> + <Enter>` to run the current cell in an interactive terminal (which will take several seconds to launch) and advance to the next cell. Alternatively, you can hit `<Ctrl> + <Shift> + p` to enable interactive commands and type "run current cell".
+You can run the Simulation Manager through a multi-week simulation of train operations in by running `python sim_manager_demo.py` in `demos/`. This will create a `plots/` subfolder in which the plots will be saved. To run interactively, fire up a Python IDE (e.g. [VS Code](https://code.visualstudio.com/Download), [Spyder](https://www.spyder-ide.org/)), and run the file. If you're in VS Code, you can run the file as a virtual jupyter notebook because of the "cells" that are marked with the `# %%` annotation. You can click on line 2, for example, and hit `<Shift> + <Enter>` to run the current cell in an interactive terminal (which will take several seconds to launch) and advance to the next cell. Alternatively, you can hit `<Ctrl> + <Shift> + p` to enable interactive commands and type "run current cell".  There are several other python files in the `demos/` folder to demonstrate various capabilities of ALTRIOS.  
 
 # Acknowledgements
  
diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index 4917ff28..8ec54f63 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -43,6 +43,7 @@ dependencies = [
     "pyyaml",
     "polars==0.18.7",
     "pyarrow",
+    "requests",
 ]
 
 [project.optional-dependencies]
diff --git a/python/altrios/__init__.py b/python/altrios/__init__.py
index df846252..37771b38 100644
--- a/python/altrios/__init__.py
+++ b/python/altrios/__init__.py
@@ -5,6 +5,7 @@
 
 
 from altrios.utilities import set_param_from_path  # noqa: F401
+from altrios.utilities import download_demo_files  # noqa: F401
 from altrios import utilities as utils
 
 import logging
@@ -12,7 +13,6 @@
 # make everything in altrios_core_py available here
 from altrios.altrios_core_py import *
 
-
 # Set up logging
 logging.basicConfig(
     format="%(asctime)s.%(msecs)03d | %(filename)s#%(lineno)s | %(levelname)s: %(message)s",
diff --git a/python/altrios/utilities.py b/python/altrios/utilities.py
index 1fa3fbfe..452b63bb 100644
--- a/python/altrios/utilities.py
+++ b/python/altrios/utilities.py
@@ -9,6 +9,7 @@
 import logging
 from pathlib import Path
 import datetime
+import requests
 
 
 from altrios.altrios_core_py import (
@@ -43,7 +44,6 @@
 
 WARM_START_DAYS = 7
 
-
 def print_dt():
     print(datetime.datetime.now().strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'))
 
@@ -267,3 +267,29 @@ def enable_logging():
     set_log_level(logging.WARNING)
 
 
+def download_demo_files():
+    """
+    Downloads demo files from github repo into local directory.
+    """
+
+    api_url = "https://api.github.com/repos/NREL/altrios/contents/applications/demos"
+    response = requests.get(api_url)
+    
+    if response.status_code == 200:
+        contents = response.json()
+        
+        for item in contents:
+            if item["type"] == "file" and item["name"].endswith(".py"):
+                file_url = item["download_url"]
+                file_name = item["name"]
+
+                demo_path = Path("demos")
+                demo_path.mkdir(exist_ok=True)
+                
+                with open(demo_path / file_name, "wb") as file:
+                    file_content = requests.get(file_url).content
+                    file.write(file_content)
+                    
+                print(f"Saved {file_name} to {str(demo_path / file_name)}")
+    else:
+        print("Failed to download demo files")