Cité du Train

We're on holidays at the moment, on our way to visit our daughter, who lives in Budapest Hungary, for Christmas.  We flew into Paris firstly, spent a couple of days there, and we're now catching trains across Europe to Budapest.  The chance to spend a few days in Mulhouse, eastern France, was one not to be missed, as this attractive city also contains two of France's best museums- the Cité du Train and the Cité de L'Auto- both of which are absolutely outstanding museums.

The Cité du Train is France's National Railway Museum and contains some absolutely amazing items.  Overall I'd say it represents the vast history of France's railways very well.  The museum is really in two parts- the original part and a newer part built for the Millenium.  The newer part is where you enter, and significantly at this time of year it is heated, the original part is not!  As a museum 'junkie' I definitely liked the newer part better, although the original part contains vastly more items.  Effectively it is a very large metal shed, with no windows, and the interior is completely satin black but with very effective spotlights highlighting the exhibits.

The first train that you see is the superb 'Micheline' railcar (Autorail) which I am very fond of.  The only other place in the world that you can see one of these is in Madagascar!  For me it symbolises French engineering generally- a willingness to try out different, hopefully better, ways of doing things, albeit not always successful !  In this case, as the name alludes to, the wheels are actually pneumatic rubber tyres, while of course still having steel flanges, an idea that ultimately didn't catch on.

In this section there were all sorts of sound effects, including 'conversations' by 'passengers' which I'm sure were quite amusing, though my French wasn't good enough to understand them.  There were mannequins, which I usually detest in museums, but these were caricatures and were very effective.

There were many details that were highlighted, and which as a collector, really fascinated me.

Moving into the original section was something of a shock as it was seriously cold!  Mind you, it was snowing outside too!  There were windows in the roof as well, which made photography a real challenge, if not impossible.  Despite this, though, there were some truly amazing locomotives on display, including all my favorite Hornby O,  AcHo and Jep HO prototypes!

It was a 'fantastique' day out, I can definitely recommend this museum, though perhaps not in winter!  France can be very proud indeed of it's railway and engineering history, and it's railway museum.