The China Railway Museum (Zhengyangmen) is located downtown, just south east of Tienanmen square. (sometime this museum is referred to as the “Beijing Railway Museum”) Their website for this museum (and the other two at Dongjiao and Badaling) is http://www.china-rail.org/
Unlike the museum at Dongjiao, this museum does not have any static displays of trains. Mainly, the museum displays are of historic news clippings and railway artifacts. Also unlike any other museum in China, the museum not crowded in the least bit.
A ticket booth for the museum is just right outside the entrance, close to the KFC. Here’s the ticket for the museum, 20 yuan, or about $3.30 CDN.
Right after you entered the main entrance, you are greeted to this large wooden wall sculpture.
A replica of the 0-3-0 Dragon Locomotive sits just after the entrance. Built in 1881, it ran on the Tangshan to Xugezhuang rail line, with a top speed of 32km/h.
The first gallery has newspaper clippings, pictures and artifacts from some of the first railways built in China.
Below is a statue of Zhan Tianyou (1861-1919) from Guangdong province, the father of Chinese Railways, built the first Chinese line from Beijing to Zhangjiakou.
Next is an interesting display of a steam locomotive cylinder and working valves.
This interesting machine was built in Germany, first used on a Chinese railway for the printing of tickets in 1927 and was in continuous use until the end of the 1980s.
Up stairs on the 2nd floor, are displays for China’s modern railway. There are various full size mock-ups, pieces of experimental prototypes and scale models.
In the basement of the museum are the sand table displays. These are large boxes with the terrain sculpted in sand. A series of projectors project colour onto the terrain, as well areal images of the cities, and the high speed trains travelling between the cities. Pretty neat, makes quite the dynamic display.
On the main floor by the exit is a small Bachmann model train store, selling most of the products that are currently being made by Bachmann model trains.