NSW Rail Museum, Railway museum in Thirlmere, Australia.
The NSW Rail Museum is a railway museum in Thirlmere, New South Wales, and holds Australia's largest collection of heritage rolling stock. The exhibits are spread across several halls and include steam locomotives, passenger carriages, and equipment from different periods of Australian rail history.
The museum was founded in 1962 with the aim of preserving Australian railway heritage, and has grown steadily since then. The collection traces the development of rail transport in New South Wales across several decades.
The museum brings together photographs, tools, and personal accounts from former railway workers that visitors can look at and read. These objects show how rail travel shaped daily life for generations of people across New South Wales.
The museum is located in Thirlmere, south of Sydney, and is most easily reached by car. Heritage train rides run mainly on weekends and during school holidays, so it is worth planning your visit around those times if that is something you want to experience.
A working turntable from the former Enfield steam depot was moved to the museum and is still used today to maintain the heritage locomotives inside the roundhouse. It is one of the few examples of this type of functioning railway infrastructure from the steam era still operating in Australia.
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