Railway Museums in Spain

This report from James Waite concentrates on the Madrid Railway Museum with information about others in the country at the end. This was written in 2007, now there is a nice set of pictures from Andrew Naylor on Smugmug (11th June 2014).

The museum is housed in the old Delicias station to the southeast of the city centre. There's a Metro station there and it's a few minutes walk from Atocha station which is the main Madrid station nowadays and is where the AVE's from Seville and (soon) Barcelona arrive.

The old station closed, if I remember rightly, in 1969. It served the line westwards to Caceres and the Portuguese frontier and the line to the southwest through Puertollano to Badajoz. The latter has closed as well, replaced by the AVE line to Seville which uses its formation for most of way as far as Puertollano. The museum opened in 1984. 

The exhibits are lined up in the old platform roads, with about one and a half roads devoted to steam locos, a smaller space for diesels and electrics and one road for coaching stock. The station has mellowed well since its conversion to a museum, with dusty corners and a fair amount of peeling and fading paintwork which seem quite authentically railwaylike! There's a glass screen at the southern end of the building where the trains used to depart. The northern end, by the buffers, has always been closed in. The buildings to the side of the train shed house a variety of small exhibits including a comprehensive collection of plates, particularly from the many builders of Spanish locos in the 19th century including one plate in Russian script.

We had a happy couple of hours here - part of which we spent in the Wagons-Lit restaurant car which serves an excellent lunch and has a well-stocked bar, very nostalgic if you travelled in Spain in the 60's and 70's. Move on from here to Atocha station, where the old train shed has been converted into a tropical garden/hothouse, find a seat in the cafe by the palms and the steampipes used to maintain humidity, order a cool cerveza, close your eyes and listen to the gentle hiss of steam - it could almost be the real thing! 

The museum website is http://www.museodelferrocarril.org/..

Here are some pictures:

RENFE 0-4-0T no.020-0231 (ex-MZA), Couillet 786/1885, in the station forecourt.

A general view down the platform where most of the steam locos are displayed.

This tiny 550mm gauge  0-4-0T (Couillet 580/1882) comes from the Barruelo mines near Palencia. It's the only narrow gauge loco in the museum.

RENFE 4-8-4 no. 242F-0421, MTM 703/1956. This huge loco was restored to working order by the ARMF group at Lleida a few years ago and has only recently moved to the museum.

RENFE 2-8-2 no. 141F-2413 (Euskalduna 374/1960), one of the last of the standard 2-8-2's, outside the museum building. Used for the Tren de la Fresa which the museum runs during weekends in the early and late summer from Madrid to Aranjuez.

The interior of the Wagons-Lit restaurant car.

RENFE 0-4-0T no. 020-0201 (ex-Andaluces no. 1), Schneider 1427/1871. This tiny loco lives amongst the small exhibits in one of the side rooms at the station. It spent much of its working life at Seville.

4232-6. Two views of the train shed at Atocha station.

How Delicias station used to be! No. 141F-2350 waiting to leave with the Correo to Badajoz in July 1968.

Don't forget the Asturias Railway Museum in the old Norte station at Gijon (museoferrocarril@gijon.es and http://www.ayto-gijon.es/Contenido.aspx?id=12407 link is dead) and the Basque Railway Museum at Azpeitia (www.euskotren.es/english/museo/03.html link is dead). I've not been to the Gijon museum. I did get to Azpeitia in the mid-90's but the museum was still being set up and it has expanded enormously since then. They now have a metre gauge running line northwards for a couple of miles.