Workshop expansion museum steam tram open next summer: “Further furnishing now”

The workshop is twice as large and ready to be set up. It is a glass exhibition space where two train tracks have been laid. The locomotives will soon be fired up on these two tracks and no longer in the open air as is currently the case.

And that results in a cleaner process. The flue gases will be collected and the heat will be used as energy supply for the new workshop. “We try to use steam locomotives in an original way, and to make them more sustainable. A unique process,” says director René van den Broeke.

Game for kids

Via a fixed walking route, visitors will first arrive in the new part where they will immediately come into contact with the past and present: the oldest steam locomotive in the Netherlands will be placed next to one from a later period. Then one walks up a staircase, where there is a view of the old locomotives in the original workshop.

Director René van den Broeke: “We had a game developed that allows the youngest visitors to discover in a playful way what those locomotives were used for, which people traveled with them, which goods and in what period the travel of a hundred years ago differs from today.”

At the back of the new workshop is an almost complete passenger carriage of steam locomotive Bello. “It used to drive from Alkmaar to Bergen aan Zee. We started the project a few years ago in the old workshop, and we will continue with this.” And if you look up, you will see a huge crane hanging. “Even complete locomotives can be lifted with it. “Visitors can see how we carry out these kinds of projects and which crafts are involved.”

Attract more visitors

The museum has had a tough few years due to corona. In 2022 it recovered and the museum received three-quarters of the visitors they normally have. With the new workshop, they have the opportunity to be open all year round.

“At the moment we drive from April 1, when the tulip fields start to bloom, until the end of December. Now – even if we don’t drive – we could open all year round and receive about 30 to 40 thousand more visitors.”