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 Asturias (; ; ) officially the Principality of Asturias, is an autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community in northwest Spain. It is coextensive with the provinces of Spain, province of Asturias and contains some of the territory t ...

. It was inaugurated on October 22, 1998 by the current king

Felipe VI Felipe VI (; Felipe Juan Pablo Alfonso de Todos los Santos de Borbón y Grecia; born 30 January 1968) is King of Spain. In accordance with the Spanish Constitution, as monarch, he is head of state and commander-in-chief of the Spanish Armed For ...

Prince of Asturias Prince or Princess of Asturias () is the main substantive title used by the heir apparent, or heir presumptive to the monarchy of Spain, Spanish Crown. According to the Spanish Constitution of 1978: The title originated in 1388, when King J ...

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, Railroad car#Freight cars, freight and Passenger railroad car, passenger cars (or coaches) ...

including

steam Steam is water vapor, often mixed with air or an aerosol of liquid water droplets. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization. Saturated or superheated steam is inv ...

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 engine ...

locomotives,

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

trams A tram (also known as a streetcar or trolley in Canada and the United States) is an urban rail transit in which Rolling stock, vehicles, whether individual railcars or multiple-unit trains, run on tramway tracks on urban public streets; some ...

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

Iberian gauge Iberian gauge (, ) is a track gauge of , most extensively used by the railways of Spain and Portugal. A broad gauge, it is the second-widest gauge in regular use anywhere in the world, with only Indian gauge railways, , being wider (by ). As ...

narrow gauge A narrow-gauge railway (narrow-gauge railroad in the US) is a railway with a track gauge (distance between the rails) narrower than . Most narrow-gauge railways are between and . Since narrow-gauge railways are usually built with Minimum railw ...

and others until seven different

track gauge In rail transport, track gauge is the distance between the two rails of a railway track. All vehicles on a rail network must have Wheelset (rail transport), wheelsets that are compatible with the track gauge. Since many different track gauges ...

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 Ferrocarril de Langreo or FC de Langreo (FCL) was a Spanish railway company which operated a line, in the Autonomous Community of Asturias, in northern Spain. It was the third train line constructed in Spain and was built during the 1850s. Hi ...

'', 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 ( ), also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in south-western Europe. Mostly separated from the rest of the European landmass by the Pyrenees, it includes the territories of peninsular Spain and Continental Portugal, comprisin ...

. 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