Vychylovka, Former railway settlement in Nová Bystrica, Slovakia.
Vychylovka is an open-air museum with traditional wooden buildings from the Kysuce area that were moved here from flooded villages. The collection includes residences, stables, barns, and an old mill that together show what rural life looked like.
The area developed with a narrow-gauge cogwheel railway built in 1903 to transport timber between the Kysuce and Orava regions. After the line closed in 1971 and villages were flooded for a reservoir in 1974, the settlement was repurposed as a museum.
The wooden houses and farm buildings come from villages flooded by the dam and show how people in the Kysuce region once lived and worked. Visitors see traditional homes, livestock shelters, and a mill that reflect daily life in this area.
The museum is about 4 kilometers northeast of Nová Bystrica and accessible via road 520. It works best to visit on milder days since it is outdoors and pathways can be slippery in wet conditions.
The cogwheel railway used a mechanical system to overcome a 217-meter elevation change over just 1500 meters of track length. This engineering solution allowed heavy timber loads to be transported through one of Europe's steepest forested areas.
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