Bondowoso Rail and Train Museum, Railway museum in Bondowoso, Indonesia.
Bondowoso Rail and Train Museum is a railway museum housed in a former colonial-era station building in the town of Bondowoso, East Java, Indonesia. The building still has its original platforms and tracks in place, which are now part of the visitor route through the site.
Bondowoso Station opened on 1 October 1897, when Staatsspoorwegen completed the Jember–Kalisat–Panarukan segment of its Probolinggo–Panarukan line. It closed in 2004 together with the whole Kalisat–Panarukan line, and the disused station reopened as a museum on 17 August 2016.
The museum holds the memory of a wartime event in which prisoners lost their lives during a train transport, an event that left a deep mark on the local community. Visitors can walk through the spaces where this happened and sense how the place still carries meaning for people in the region.
The museum is located in the center of Bondowoso and is easy to reach on foot from most parts of the town. Since the visit takes you along platforms and tracks outdoors, comfortable and sturdy shoes are a good idea.
The museum is Indonesia's third railway museum, after Ambarawa and Sawahlunto; counting Lawang Sewu, it is the fourth. It opened on 17 August 2016 in the former Bondowoso station, which had been closed since 2004. The station building is now a cagar budaya, a protected cultural heritage site.
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