Cité du train

About

The Cité du Train (English: City of the Train or Train City), located in Mulhouse, France, is one of the ten larget railway museums in the world. It is the estate to the French National Railway Museum, the organization responsible for the conservation of major historical SNCF railway equipment.

History: In 1961, Mulhouse City Council offered land in Dornach to allow the SNCF to present their historical rolling stock, representative of the company's history. In 1971, the first locomotives were provisionally placed in the old engine shed, Mulhouse-Nord. A second site neary was opened to the public in 1983 at which stage the museum received 240,000 visitors a year. As await declined, it was decided to transfer the collection to the group Culture Espaces, which was already in charge of the Cité de l'automobile (French national automobile museum) since 1999. The French national, regional and departmental governments, as well as the City of Mulhouse, financed a renovation at a total cost of 8.6 million euros. The architect François Seigneur designed an exhibition display named Le siècle d'or du chemin de fer (The golden century of railway...