Railway Museums in Asia

Within my chosen geographical area which excludes North America, most of Europe and Japan, the occurrence of genuine railway museums as opposed to the odd preserved steam locomotive or tourist railway is quite rare. Here you will find a list of known links which describe those I either know about through personal experience or through submissions to my website or which have been located by web searches. Some are no more than (steam) locomotive parks, others have barely a steam locomotive to be seen. It will be a useful quick check list for readers making short visits. I have also included a note of known steam tourist operations where appropriate for Africa, Asia and parts of South America, the latter are covered in more detail in the relevant continent page. By and large the links are to pages which are in English, although these days a web-based automatic translation will normally produce something good enough to get started during a visit.... Please email me with additions and corrections to the address at the end, include a sensible and appropriate subject line to help avoid vanishing into the spam filter.

There are certain umbrella organisations whose sites may be helpful, particularly IATM (International Association of Transport and communications Museums) - see http://www.iatm.org/finished/start_klein.php - railways are necessarily a small sub group. Others are regional and are noted as appropriate.

Another recommended link - http://www.innvista.com/culture/travel/rail/mindex.htm - as of September 2007 it was last updated in February 2007 and less complete than this site for non-mainstream areas, but necessarily it may be updated, but it will be a good source for the USA, Canada, Australasia and Western Europe.

As always Wikipedia is worth a look but when I checked this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_railway_museums it had far fewer entries in my areas than are on this page.

This page covers railway museums in the Americas, either scroll down the page or click on a continent for a further menu.

Asia

China

There are four major museums. These sites are in Chinese unless otherwise stated:

Beijing - http://www.chinasteam.co.uk/museum.htm and http://home.c2i.net/schaefer/railwaymuseum/ (English)

Shenyang - http://www.syslm.com.cn

Shanghai - http://www.shrail.com/bwg/tlbwg.htm - link down in May 2007

Kunming -at Kunming Bei Station http://www.chinasteam.co.uk/trains/china262.htm (English, added 1st March 2009)

Hong Kong

See http://hk.heritage.museum/english/branch_sel_hkr.htm. 

India

There is a general (unofficial) website which may develop and prove useful http://www.freewebs.com/nrlym/ otherwise check out http://www.irfca.org

There are two major museums:

New Delhi - see this unofficial site http://www.railinindia.tripod.com/nrm.html and http://www.irfca.org/gallery/Heritage (the latter added 14th April 2008)

Mysore - see this unofficial site http://www.mysore.net/travel/railwaymuseum.htm and http://www.irfca.org/gallery/Heritage (the latter added 14th April 2008)

Minor museums are known to exist too:

Howrah - see http://www.irfca.org/gallery/Heritage

Nagpur - see http://www.irfca.org/gallery/Members/VikasSingh/VikasSinghNagpurNGMuseum

Pune - see http://www.minirailways.com/ and http://minirailways.tripod.com/modelrailway.htm, also http://www.irfca.org/gallery/Heritage/CME-Museum/ (the latter added 14th April 2008)

Regional Rail Museum Perambur (Works), Chennai/ Madras 

Gorakhpur (Uttar Pradesh)

The College of Military Engineering (CME) at Khadki (Dapodi), Pune, has a museum with several old railway exhibits including locomotives and other rolling stock.

There are occasional public and private steam specials. The public ones are generally poorly advertised in advance and liable to last minute change of dates! 

Indonesia

There are two railway museums on Java, that at Ambarawa operates occasional private special trains up the rack railway. See the unofficial site http://www.internationalsteam.co.uk/ambarawa/museum.htm 

That in Jakarta is 100% static. See the unofficial site http://www.internationalsteam.co.uk/ambarawa/tmlocos.htm 

A new (railway and mining heritage) museum is being established at Sawahlunto in West Sumatra, until recently a major coal mine. E1060 has been returned from Ambarawa as an operating exhibit (added 30th November 2008)

Israel

See http://www.israrail.org.il/english/general/museum.html.

Japan

Chris Walker tells me that a major railway museum opened near Tokyo on 14th October 2007. The official website http://www.railway-museum.jp/top.html is all in Japanese, of course, but there is clearly an excellent collection here. For English language information check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_Museum_%28Saitama%29. A link from this page reports also that the Modern Transportation Musuem in in Osaka also has steam locomotives present, but no details are given, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Transportation_Museum (added 10th January 2009). 

Jordan

There are occasional private steam charters.

Malaysia

The North Borneo Railway operated regular steam out of Kota Kinabalu in Sabah but the service was suspended in 2007 while upgrading of the line was carried out. See www.northborneorailway.com.my. The state museum in Kota Kinabalu has steam locomotives exhibited, as does the national museum in Kuala Lumpur.

Mongolia

Colin Young tells me that there is a small open air museum in Ulaan Bataar, which he saw from a passing bus but didn't visit. There are at least 3 steam locomotives here, one of which is a P36. Torsten Schneider has provided more information and some pictures (2nd December 2008).

Myanmar

There have been occasional private steam charters, as of December 2008, these were at best suspended or worst finished.

Nepal

There are very occasional private steam charters.

Pakistan

There is a museum near Rawalpindi. See the Pakistan Railways website http://www.pakrail.com or specifically http://www.pakrail.com/her4.asp. 

There are occasional private steam charters and semi-public trains up the Khyber Pass from time to time, although as of late-2007 services had been suspended for some time after monsoon damage..

South Korea

Several reports on the web describe briefly a railway museum at Seoul Station opened in 1987 (3rd December 2008) but a 2008 blog reports it as being near derelict, I cannot trace any mention of steam locomotives being present here.

There is a further railway museum at Uiwang http://www.uw21.net/eng/html2007/sub3/sub3_c4.html and http://english.gg.go.kr/tour/sightseeingSite.jsp?seq=100&page=1&caller=Uiwang, it has steam locomotives present. http://www.steamlocomotive.info lists quite a few preserved steam locomotives in the country but does not mention this location although it reports steam locomotives at Bugok, which I believe is the former name of Uiwang station. A restored relic of the Korean war (apparently a 4-8-2) is displayed at Imjingak Park, Paju (added 10th January 2009).

Sri Lanka

There are occasional private steam charters. A new museum in Colombo opened in May 2009 - see http://www.railwaymuseum.lk. Keith Smith was in here in September 2009.

Syria

There are occasional private steam charters, in former years there were weekend steam specials from Damascus up to which may resume at least in part. Thomas Kautzor has forwarded some pictures and information from Ernst Hallas on the works at Cadem which have, in effect, become a museum (24th December 2008). 

Taiwan

There is a museum at Miaoli see http://museum.cca.gov.tw/en/directory/show.php?id=171 (I cannot verify this link as it is not accessible to me.) There are plans to convert the old steam shed at Changwa into a national railway museum. 

Thailand

There are occasional public steam specials from Bangkok to Ayuthaya, traditionally these occur on 26th March, 12th August, 23rd October and 5th December. Tickets are available some 2-3 weeks in advance but often just jumping on the train and paying will work if they are officially 'sold out'. 

There is a small private museum in Bangkok, in the park north of the 'Weekend Market', see my report, also several exhibits outside the National Science Exhibition Centre at Ekkemai in Bangkok..

Uzbekistan

See Torsten Schneider's pictures of the Tashkent Railway Museum and a further set from Colin Young (added 10th December 2007).