Our holiday took us to Gijon on the northern coast of Spain which by sheer coincidence has a railway museum. Honest, it was a coincidence.

The Asturias Railway Museum is in the former Noroeste Railway station built in 1874. It stopped being a station in 1990 and the Gijon City Council started converting it into a museum in 1992. The museum opened six years later and aims to tell the industrial history of Asturias, central to this were the railway systems.

It is an excellent museum. Covering an area of 14 000 square metres, it has a fantastic collection of Spanish broad gauge, metre gauge and, because Gijon was an important mining area, 600mm (2 feet) gauge lines too.

The collection includes a fascinating mixture of stock manufactured in Spain, USA, England, France and Germany. The exhibits are supported by excellent information panels which are really interesting and informative.

I was thoroughly impressed, it’s one of the best museums I’ve visited. Congratulations to the Gijon City Council for having the foresight to create such a special place.

I’ve divided the photos into two galleries. First the metre and broad gauge stock…. (click on a photo for a larger image)

… and the 600mm and 750mm gauge stock (click on a photo for a larger image).