The Asturias Railway Museum or Gijón Railway museum (Museo del Ferrocarril de Asturias), in Gijón, Asturias, Spain, is an institution dedicated to restore, preserve and display to the public the railway history of Asturias. It was inaugurated on October 22, 1998 by the current king

Felipe VI Felipe VI (;, * eu, Felipe VI.a, * ca, Felip VI, * gl, Filipe VI, . Felipe Juan Pablo Alfonso de Todos los Santos de Borbón y Grecia; born 30 January 1968) is King of Spain. He is the son of former King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofía, and h ...

as Prince of Asturias in that moment. The centre is economically supported by Gijón City Council, and it’s integrated in the museums municipal network. It’s one of the most important Spanish railways museums. MFA Hall 1

The museum is located at the old North Train Station of Gijón, very near Poniente Beach. It occupies more than 14,000 m² and includes the original station, built in 1874, two new buildings and railway tracks.

Collection

It has more than 1,000 objects, of which 140 are

rolling stock The term rolling stock in the rail transport industry refers to railway vehicles, including both powered and unpowered vehicles: for example, locomotives, freight and passenger cars (or coaches), and non-revenue cars. Passenger vehicles can b ...

including

steam Steam is a substance containing water in the gas phase, and sometimes also an aerosol of liquid water droplets, or air. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization ...

and

diesel Diesel may refer to: * Diesel engine, an internal combustion engine where ignition is caused by compression * Diesel fuel, a liquid fuel used in diesel engines * Diesel locomotive, a railway locomotive in which the prime mover is a diesel engin ...

locomotives,

wagons A wagon or waggon is a heavy four-wheeled vehicle pulled by draught animals or on occasion by humans, used for transporting goods, commodities, agricultural materials, supplies and sometimes people. Wagons are immediately distinguished from ...

, trams and other material related with the history of train technologies in Spain. Those materials are

Iberian gauge Iberian gauge ( es, ancho ibérico, trocha ibérica, pt, bitola ibérica) is a track gauge of , most extensively used by the railways of Spain and Portugal. This is the second-widest gauge in regular use anywhere in the world. The Indian gauge, , ...

, narrow gauge and others until seven different

track gauge In rail transport, track gauge (in American English, alternatively track gage) is the distance between the two rails of a railway track. All vehicles on a rail network must have wheelsets that are compatible with the track gauge. Since many d ...

s types. The collection is closely connected with the large Asturias industrial history, in fact Asturias has the most dense rail network in the country. Some of the museum steam locomotives come from '' Ferrocarril de Langreo'', a line connecting Langreo and Gijón and was the fourth railway line built in Spain in 1852 and the third in

Iberian Peninsula The Iberian Peninsula (), ** * Aragonese and Occitan: ''Peninsula Iberica'' ** ** * french: Péninsule Ibérique * mwl, Península Eibérica * eu, Iberiar penintsula also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in southwestern Europe, defi ...

. The collection includes locomotives from other disappeared companies like ''Ferrocarriles del Norte'', ''Vasco Asturiano'' and many locomotives used in coal and iron mines in Asturias. The museum is a reference centre for the study of Spanish railway history and have many documentation (books, photographs, maps, statistics, companies shares, technical documents, economic studies, working and social conditions descriptions) available for researchers. An important part of that documentation is digitalized.

Activities

Many locomotives are still operatives and several times during the year some steam locomotives are started and circulate over the rail tracks, these events are called Steam days. Steam days are very popular, and many people go these days to the museum platforms to see the old locomotives to move again and to travel in them. One weekend per month, a train related market is held in museum platforms. The museum has a room dedicated to railway modelling. Other very important activity is the restoration workshop, in which the old locomotives and material recovered from industries, mines and train companies by the museum staff are restored to its originally state and if it is possible to a working state. In some cases, this is a difficult process that implies consulting technical and historic documents and takes a lot of time and money.

Gallery

Stand out in the collection the following equipment:

External links

Museum Website

Museum’s Facebook page

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gijon Railway Museum Railway museums in Spain Museums in Asturias Defunct railway stations in Spain Gijón