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.ws/ - 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 these pages.

This page covers railway museums in the Americas, either scroll down the page or click on a continent for a further menu - the non-European list is now kept separately.

Americas

Antigua (added 25th January 2012)

James Waite pointed me at http://www.antiguanice.com/v2/documents/Newsletter%203rd%20qtr%202011final%20pdf.pdf which relates how the Museum of Antigua and Barabuda will take responsibility for the remaining 17 locomotives out of 26 delivered to the island. Of these five are steam and one of them, a Brazil class (with dummy boiler), will be restored cosmetically. The others are 4 petrol and 5 diesels. Many readers will recall that 'Joan' on the Welshpool and Llanfair Railway in Wales came from the Gunthorpe sugar estate here in the early 1970s.

Argentina

There are occasional public and private steam specials  - see Americas section of this site. Ferroclub Argentino maintain the Escalada Railway Museum which was formerly the main running shed serving Plaza Constitucion station in Buenos Aires, there is a collection of broad gauge locomotives and rolling stock present. See http://www.porlosrielesdelsud.com.ar/club/englifcl.html. (Museum data added 10th December 2007), there are pictures of some of the stock included in Fabrice Lanoue's report of his April 2011 visit. He also visited the standard gauge Colonel Lynch museum (18th May 2011).

Brazil

There are a number of tourist railways and museums - see the ABPF websites (national - www.abpf.org.br/ and various regional ones particularly the São Paulo one www.abpfsp.com.br/), also a list on this site. Particularly noteworthy is the museum for the funicular railway at Paranapiacaba (see http://www.abpfsp.com.br/museu_ferroviario_paranapiacaba.htm) and  the operational narrow gauge railway and museum at São João d'El Rey in West Minas.

A further list of museums is to be found on the site of ANPF Associação Nacional de Preservação Ferroviária http://www.anpf.com.br/turismo_ferroviario_int.htm which claims to be up to date to July 2008 and supplants an earlier 2004 version. (added 21st October 2008).

Chile

There is railway museum in Santiago - see http://www.lcgb.org.uk/html/santiagomuseum.htm for a report of a visit. The shed at Temuco has also functioned as a museum in the past. 

There are occasional public and private steam specials - see Americas section of this site.  

Colombia

There are occasional public and private steam specials - see Americas section of this site.  

Cuba

There is a developing Railway Museum at Cristina Station in Havana - mention of it is made in trip reports (2005-7) in the Americas section of this site. Trevor Heath has sent some pictures of restoration in progress (4th December 2009).

There are occasional private steam specials.

Ecuador

There are occasional private steam specials - see Americas section of this site.  

Guatemala

The former station at Guatemala City now serves as a museum. The nearby workshops ought to be a museum. Thanks to Colin Martindale for reminding me that I had left this out - despite visiting it myself in 2004!

Mexico

This list was culled from Wikipedia, I would appreciate visitor reports, necessarily these links may not be reliable.

Museo de los Ferrocarriles de Yucatán, Mérida, Yucatán - http://celorio.com/mfy/roster.htm see also Keith Smith's report of a May 2008 visit.

Ferrocarril Interoceanico heritage railway & museum. Cuautla, Morelos - http://www.rinconestudiantil.com/morelosnatural/Webs/Turismo/Tren_escenico.htm

Museo Nacional de los Ferrocarriles Mexicanos, Puebla, Puebla - http://www.museoferrocarriles.org.mx (link is dead)

Museo Tecnológico de la Comisión Federal de Electricidad (MUTEC), Mexico City

Museo del Ferrocarril de Torreón, Torreón, Coahuila

Peru

There are occasional private steam specials - see Americas section of this site.

John Pickston (16th August 2008) has suggested Tacna Railway Museum. He says "I do not know the current situation, however I expect that it is probably unchanged from my visit in 1998, when I was there on a Dorridge Travel Tour. The station/museum is enclosed and gated, like many others in South America, with stock displayed in the open air. I recall that all the exhibits were rather dusty! The web page http://www.perutren.org/portal/node/14 mentions the 150th anniversary of the Tacna-Arica line in 2006 and Tacna station is described as the "The Railway Museum of Peru". This location is in the far south of the country, close to the border with Chile, so it tends to get forgotten by most tours."

USA

By and large I don't cover museums in North America, but good friend James Waite has sent me a very nice report of his visit to on of the lesser known, the Gold Coast Railroad Museum in Miami (28th January 2012). James previously posted a report (1st November 2011) on narrow gauge Maine survivors which included a visit to the museum at Portland.

James has also now sent a report of his visit to the Colorado Railroad Museum, which is at least predominantly narrow gauge! (30th January 2012)

There are several reports of US narrow gauge operations on my narrow gauge pages.

Venezuela

Wayne Weiss points out that a number of steam locomotives are preserved in Museo de Transporte, Parque del Este, Caracas, which is a short walk from Los Caminos station on the Metro system. As of 31st December 2011 the museum's website  - http://www.museotransporte-caracas.com - has been hijacked but 14 steam locomotives are listed on this web page http://www.steamlocomotive.info/country.cfm?which=venezuela. Some exhibits are from Puerto Rico - brought for a failed tourist railway project including a rare Glover. There are also a Sentinel and an extremely unusual Bell 0-4-0T. The latter is an American loco similar to a Sentinel using Stanley Steamer designs and concepts, it may be the only one of its kind left in the world, see http://www.gearedsteam.com/bell/bell.htm (details of exhibits added 24th November 2007).