My Travels to Transport Museums

Apparently when Japanese travel overseas, many make a point of visiting the art galleries and museums at their destinations. Of course, I've seen my fair share: the British Museum, the Louvre, the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Deutsches Museum in Munich, to name a few. But my favorite sort of museum would have to be transport museums. Always featuring something unique to the country in question, these museums are a true delight. Here in Japan, I have visited the Transportation Museum in Tokyo several times since childhood. On display there is Benkei, Japan's first steam locomotive. I have seen two of Benkei's contemporaries, Yoshitsune and Shizuka, at the Umekoji Steam Locomotive Museum in Kyoto (Note: Yoshitsune is now exhibited in Modern Transportation Museum in Osaka.) and at a transport in Hokkaido, respectively. Neither museum is conveniently located, but I always try to visit when nearby on business. While taking an express train from Osaka during a business trip last summer, I spotted the building of the Modern Transportation Museum from the window. "Drat!" I thought, regretting my failure to include a visit there in my plans. No longer used steam locomotives can be found on display all over Japan, even in unexpected locations, like the small station plaza in a Tokyo commercial district. On a recent trip to Toyama I saw a steam locomotive (that saw service about 80 years ago) in Joshi Koen park. Unfortunately, most of these locomotives no longer seem to be in working condition.
With the inauguration of the line No.3 project in Fukuoka on February 29th, Japan's fourth Linear Metro System has been successfully launched. With a linear motor for propulsion, this new type of subway incorporates many additional features - notably a smaller, compact cross-section and as a consequence, a smaller tunnel diameter, substantially reducing construction costs.

1. The first steam locomotive in Japan (Transportation Museum, Tokyo, Japan)
2. Visitors can actually ride the C622 steam locomotive
(Umekoji Steam Locomotive Museum, Kyoto, Japan)
3. The panel on the side of C622 shows it was manufactured by Hitachi
(Umekoji Steam Locomotive Museum, Kyoto, Japan)
4. Series 0 Shinkansen Donated from Japan (National Railway Museum in York, United Kingdom)

During my time at the University of Connecticut in the United States, I visited a number of transport museums in the area. In the town of Essex to the south, volunteers took an old steam locomotive out on the weekends. It was very popular with families. South Carver to the east on the way to Plymouth also had a steam locomotive run by volunteers. Here, I met a Japanese businessman who had stopped by on a business trip to New York or somewhere. Two trolley museums in the north and south of the state also ran trolley cars. Both collected trolley cars used in the United States in earlier days, and had laid tracks on which volunteers ran the cars on weekends. The interior of the cars still displayed old advertisements, one informing passengers of a Christmas performance of The Wizard of Oz. Of all the transport museums on the East Coast of the U.S., the one in Boston was once the most famous. I traveled there one weekend, a couple of hours by car from Connecticut, to find a notice informing visitors that the museum had recently closed due to financial difficulties. This museum was said to house a collection of old motorcars. I wondered what happened to them. I later found the computer museum, which had previously stood on the grounds of DEC, located where the transport museum had been. The contents of this museum had also changed, from preserving and displaying the history of computers, to more information-oriented exhibits for the general public.

Among the European transport museums, the one in London is particularly well known. London's Transport Museum is intended for the general public, as opposed to transport enthusiasts. Britain's first steam locomotive, the Rocket, is not found here, but at the British Museum. Unfortunately this area was closed when I visited. I've heard that the UK has a lot of transport museums, like the one in York. I hope to visit these facilities a little at a time every year. In Germany, the Berlin Museum of Transport and Technology has preserved a number of steam locomotives, which are now on display. The emphasis at German museums appears to be on keeping a historical record. The sheer volume of material is quite overwhelming. Last year I had planned to visit the transport museum in Dresden, but the floods forced a sudden diversion to the transport museum in Nuremberg. Nuremberg is the original home of German Rail. In Germany, trains are kept indoors, out of the weather. This museum houses a number of locomotives, including the royal train of King Ludwig II of Bavaria, though not as many as I had expected. What it does have is an extensive collection of very detailed models. This, too, was a transport museum with an emphasis on preserving history. In some town in Germany? I can't remember where?I spotted a poster on a tram advertising a tram museum at the terminus of a particular line. My college German of many years ago is a little rusty to say the least, but this ad was something I'd never have any trouble understanding! I promptly went off for a look, and found rows of old trams jammed together in what seemed more like a storage shed than a museum. Hardly anyone was there. No one collected admission fees. Museums vary considerably in their methods of collecting and exhibiting, depending on whether their focus is on preserving history or disseminating knowledge. Personally, I prefer the former. I believe museums have a major role in preserving valuable resources for future generations. Transport in particular, like information technology, is a field of fast-paced technical innovation. I would like to see this valuable material properly stored and administered, rather than scattered and lost.

• Transportation Museum (open in new window)
• Umekoji Steam Locomotive Museum (open in new window)
• Modern Transportation Museum (open in new window)
• London's Transport Museum (open in new window)