The Railway Museum Reinvented: The Cité du Train and the Nederlands Spoorwegmuseum
The Railway Museum Reinvented: The Cité du Train (Mulhouse) and the Nederlands Spoorwegmuseum (Utrecht)
Robert Gwynne
Most museums reinvent themselves periodically. The process is never easy, and it becomes more difficult and costly when displays are built around such massive objects as steam locomotives. The Cité du Train in Mulhouse and the Nederlands Spoorwegmuseum in Utrecht have accomplished this dramatic reinterpretation.1 They are appropriate venues for such a transformation. France not only introduced the widely emulated high-speed Train à Grande Vitesse (TGV) some thirty years ago, but its TGV Est, which stops in Mulhouse on its way to Switzerland, is the fastest passenger train in the world.2 The rail system in the much smaller but more densely populated Netherlands is the most intensively used on the Continent.
The French museum opened at its permanent site in 1976 to display steam locomotives and historic rolling stock formerly housed at the Mulhouse Nord railway depot. Although its geographic location in Alsace was not a natural tourist destination for either French nationals or foreign visitors, this Musée Nationale du Chemin de Fer became a popular attraction. Attendance fell over time, however, and the museum closed in December 2003 when work started on an extensive reconfiguration designed by architect (and former scenographer) François Seigneur. That process, which increased the size of the museum to 15,000 square meters and cost €8.6 million (over $12.3 million at current exchange rates), is the subject of a four-minute film shown on-site. Administration of the transformed facility was transferred to the entrepreneurial culturespaces,3 which performs this service for a number of French museums and historical sites. Since the typical French museum is staffed by government employees and closes one day each week, both the outsourcing and the “7 sur 7” schedule seem almost as radical as the actual recasting of the display.
Fig. 1 An 0-3-0 “Bourbonnais” locomotive welcomes visitors to the striking new building at the French National Railway Museum, now called “Cité du Train” (author photo).
Meanwhile, at the other end of the Rhine, the National Railway Museum of the Netherlands was undertaking its own renewal project. The museum had begun humbly enough in the mid-1920s to display rail-related ephemera. It was another decade before it began to preserve historically significant equipment, and some items were destroyed during the Second World War. It opened at its permanent site—the remodeled Maliebaan station—in 1954, but despite renovations in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, most of its collection of rolling stock—now augmented by a number of trams— was open to the weather. Major renovations began in 2003, when the station building was restored to its nineteenth-century appearance, and a new facility was built on the other side of the still-existing tracks to contain the “four worlds” described below. The complex reopened in 2005, at a cost of €35 million (over $50 million in today’s currency).
This review will compare the two facilities, presenting what typical visitors will see (and miss seeing) in each of these museums dedicated to the history of the train.
Visitors to the French museum may arrive by automobile (Michelin’s Guide Vert calls it “worth a detour”) or, more appropriately, by train. Both the high-speed TGV Est and the slower Train Corail halt in Mulhouse, where the utilitarian station is decorated with posters of the British-built, nineteenth-century, brass-clad, and flag-draped PO locomotive that pulled the train used by the president of France. After that brief introduction to the “golden age” of rail, however, passengers must board a city bus for the uninspiring ramble through residential and industrial zones to the edge of Mulhouse before they reach the museum where “Cité du Train” is spelled out in neon over the entrance, and a plinthed tank engine serves as a threedimensional logo (fig. 1). The Nederlands Spoorwegmuseum, on the other hand, is located near the city center, one of a cluster of museums and churches in Utrecht’s museum district, and is accessible by taxi, by bus, or—for the energetic—by foot. Its exterior gives few signs of the function the station has served for more than fifty years, restored as it is to the solid and unassuming character popularly associated with the Dutch, and as suitable to a shipping company or a law firm as to a museum (fig. 2).
Fig. 2 The entrance to the Nederlands Spoorwegmuseum at Utrecht seems understated, given the experience the museum offers (author photo).
In both cases, the step through the doorway is a revelation. Seigneur may have expended little architectural energy on the decorated shed that encloses the Cité du Train, but his scenographic experience is clearly in evidence inside its walls. After paying an entrance fee of €7.60 to €10 (children under seven are admitted free) and receiving audioguides, visitors pass through double doors, first into a bright orange space that heightens excitement, and then into what could be the set of a cinematic extravaganza. Within this vast, darkened “studio,” brightly lit scenarios are introduced by character mannequins that “come to life” when visitors approach. Peasants go off to market, a French president is left behind in his nightgown, the railcar arriving at the seaside in “The Holiday Train” is escorted by flying seagulls, and the engine in “Railways and Mountains” pushes through “snow” formed from polystyrene (fig. 3). Like “Official Trains,” “Railways and War,” “The Railway Workers,” and “The Journey,” these scenes reinforce the cinematic nature of the museum with archival film footage and fully dressed sets that include railway paraphernalia and equipment such as notice boards, distinctive seating, and water columns. The total is charming and— often literally—dazzling. Visitors in fact have cause to be grateful for the audioguides that free them from trying to read the (excellent) guidebook in the near dark. (The visual fatigue stemming from the extreme contrast in light levels is another story.) The guides are an excellent application of modern technology on one of the linguistic boundaries of Europe, since they may be tuned to French, English, or German and can even translate the “conversations” held by the mannequins. Despite their advantages, they do suggest that the displays were created with an adult audience in mind, a notion reinforced by the strictly linear progression from one scene to another, and overall, the spectacle rarely accommodates the social interaction that so often marks a museum visit. The locomotives themselves are spectacular, particularly—although its effect may be read as somewhat gruesome—the “Consolidation” steam engine, shown on its side as if the French Resistance had just blown up the track. The accompanying film fleshes out the work of the railways in the Second World War, but visitors are advised to read the guidebook to fully understand the story. At the end of this experience, visitors exit through a set of double doors and a second bright orange corridor into a glassed-in space where the café is located, and they may then enter the original museum building that houses “The Railway Adventure.” Here the overall impression is that little has changed since the original museum opened: large technical diagrams and ranks of locomotives and rolling stock prevail, intermittently punctuated by the sound of the 1949 Caso “Hudson” steam engine on rollers clanking into action, accompanied by a soundtrack of it steaming away. An adjoining play area is a nod to interactivity for families whose children have been bored by too much “spectacle.”
Fig. 3 The “Railways and Mountains” display features a Snow-Plough ZR1 “Aurillac” (built by the American Locomotive Company in 1908) pushing through a simulated snow-covered line (author photo).
The Nederlands Spoorwegmuseum is a generally more family-oriented experience. Upon entering the Maliebaan facility, one sees (and may photograph) the grand and quietly ostentatious “Royal Waiting Room,” transplanted from the Staatsspoor station in The Hague that was demolished in 1973. (Given the unassuming character of most stations in the Netherlands, this may be a greater surprise to Dutch visitors than for those accustomed to the glories of the Gare de Lyon, Grand Central Station, St. Pancras International, or even York.) The Royal Waiting Room itself is physically offlimits to visitors, but everywhere else there are a variety of playful means of connecting with the history of railways in the Netherlands. Kept luggage is open to view, and “Pepper’s ghost” gives a glimpse of rail travel in the nineteenth century. Life-sized cutouts of uniformed railway staff invite visitors to climb aboard, look inside, and play with interactive devices that are cleverly placed and camera-friendly. Admission (€9.50 to €12.50) is transacted, appropriately enough, at a ticket window in the station, and tickets-inhand visitors then exit the station and cross the railway tracks to explore the four different “worlds” in the new section. The first world of “The Great Discovery” (early nineteenth century) is not actually the first to be encountered, that location being unaccountably occupied by what is technically World 4, a large hall with trains called “The Workshop” (fig. 4). It is, however, brilliantly lit for the cameraphone generation, and it allows visitors to walk under a steam locomotive raised high on a gantry, so that its workings are easier to examine than would be the case were it displayed over an inspection pit as happens at Mulhouse, York, and other railway museums eager to exploit a locomotive’s hidden parts. Human “edutrainers” are on hand to explain what visitors are seeing. “Great Discovery” also uses an audioguide and a lift that “journeys back in time” to introduce the first passenger train in the Netherlands. As at the Cité du Train, the initial effect is cinematic, but the audioguide commentary, replica buildings, and range of objects combine to shape how “Die Arend” came to haul the first passenger train out of Amsterdam in 1839. “Great Discovery” visitors exit through rooms seen peripherally upon entry, an idiosyncratic gallery showing pictures of early railways in the Netherlands. World 2 is called “Dream Travels”—international trains at the turn of the twentieth century—and, somewhat oddly, uses the theme of the Orient Express to convey the possibilities of this kind of transportation. Visitors in need of a respite will appreciate the comfortable theater in this world and its films of certain aspects of railway history. Visitors in need of a sandwich will head toward the café, where they sit at tables decorated with locomotives while they look at real locomotives visible in “The Workshop” next door. World 3 presents the “Steel Monsters” of the 1930s and 1940s, but it does so via “Grandfather’s Attic,” an eclectic display of railway memorabilia, models, posters, and other ephemera, as well as via a “dark ride.” This is less a ghost train designed by social historians than an enjoyable—and unusual—three minutes of real trains and mannequins in dramatic interaction. Throughout, the displays and simple interactives allow adults and children to experience trains and railways together.
Fig. 4 Glasgow-built Nederlandsche Rhijnspoorweg-Maatschappij (NRS) number 107 of 1889 dominates “The Workshop” part of the Nederlands Spoorweg- museum (author photo).
Overall, both museums have opted for spectacle but have done so in ways reflective of their culture. The Cité du Train appears both somewhat grand and somewhat exclusive; the Dutch, as practical as their rail network is functional, have nuanced their approach to appeal to a family-centered audience. The “dark ride” borrows from theme parks, while the excellent miniature railway that goes around a lake and through a tunnel appeals to the kid in all of us. The Cité du Train hopes to add its own miniature train system, and it also wants to connect to the existing railway when another section of the TGV network is complete. Utrecht, meanwhile, has its own station and runs regular trips with historic railcars from the museum onto the main line. Neither facility brings the history of the train into the twenty-first century—or even into the late twentieth, for that matter. Still, both museums are well worth the journey. For nonspecialists, however, especially those visiting with children, Utrecht’s interactive displays and activities are more appealing—certainly, its “dark ride” is guaranteed to excite even the most jaded of museum goers, regardless of age.
1 Further information on the Nederlands Spoorwegmuseum is available at (accessed 7 August 2009); information on the Cité du Train can be found at (accessed 7 August 2009).
2 The success of TGV transport has spelled the end of low-cost flights from the local airport to the capital, Paris.
3 The collapsed spelling and partial-boldface type convey the company’s intent to unify culture and espace (space).
©2009 by the Society for the History of Technology.
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