The Cite du Train: Europes Largest Railway Museum

The Cite du Train is the biggest railway museum in Europe and is one of the biggest railway museums in Europe. It mostly houses historical SNCF railway equipment. It’s located in Mulhouse, France. Mulhouse is well known for its transportation museums. In addition to having the Cite du Train, it also has the Cité de l’Automobile. The Cité de l’Automobile is an automobile museum that displays the largest collection of automobiles and contains the largest and most comprehensive collection of Bugatti motor vehicles in the world.

While visiting, I took several pictures and learned a lot about old trains and historical SNCF railway equipment. The picture above is from a train called the Micheline. This is the first train I saw when entering the museum and I found really cool. The Micheline was a rubber-tired railcar developed by Michelin. These trains could go really fast at the time and promised smoothness inside. It transported passengers all over France and could be found all around France.

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Unfortunately, these trains also required a lot of tires, which is why they were eventually phased out. Bugatti is a company that makes very fast luxurious cars. Something you may have known about Bugatti is that it made trains.

Here’s a picture of a Bugatti train: In the 1930s, Ettore Bugatti designed one of the first high-speed systems in the world. He used it to test his new Bugatti train around the Bugatti factory in Alsace, France. Back then, a lot of trains were hauled by heavy steam locomotives.

The trains could be combined to suit the need of the French railway. The French railway was able to greatly reduce the time between train stations. The trains were also a lot lighter, cleaner, and more comfortable than steam trains. The fastest and most comfortable train known as PRESIDENTIAL had 4 engines which produced 800 hp. With 48 seats, in 1934, this train achieved 196 kph (122 mph) a new world record.

From 1933 and for five years, Bugatti built and maintained more than 100 railcars. This resulted in a huge expansion of the factory and helped the difficult economy at the time. In the 1930s, fuel/petrol was cheap. But, as fuel became more expensive, Bugatti trains were phased out as they were getting too expensive to operate. Today, most high-speed rail trains got inspired by Bugatti as they’re lightweight and have a similar aerodynamic design. Outside, we were able to ride a miniature train. You sit on a train and the train moves on a track.

The ride is short as the track is not very long but it is a fun ride. However, you need to make sure that you arrive on time as it only operates a few times per day. From the outside, I liked how we could see a real railway with a lot of trains passing. I saw a lot of trains passing on the railway while visiting. This includes the tram, freight trains, TERs, intercity trains, and even TGVs. The museum was very big. It had trained from the beginning of the french railways till the TGVs of today. There were plenty of presidential railcars. This would be the railcar that the French President would travel on to go anywhere since this was before Presidential aircraft.

This railcar could attach to any train and be very luxurious inside. There was an entire exhibition on TGVs. It talked about how the TGV got developed. The TGV was first developed in 1960. In 1981, the first TGV prototype left Paris. First, TGVs ran on petrol. But with the oil crisis, it was evident that the train would have to be fully electric. The first high-speed track opened in 1981 and linked Paris with Lyon. There were several models of the different types of TGVs since 1981. Today, newer TGVs are double-decker and can carry up to 508 passengers. In the end, the Cite du Train was very interesting. The museum is very big and you can spend the entire day. A good and bad thing is that there aren’t too many people. I highly recommend it if you like trains or would like to learn about the history of trains.