Ambarawa Railway Museum
B 5112, one of the preserved steam locomotive in the Ambarawa Railway Museum.
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| Established | October 6, 1976 |
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| Location | Jalan Setasiun No.1, Ambarawa, Central Java, Indonesia |
| Type | Railway museum |
The Ambarawa Railway Museum, (Indonesian: Museum Kereta Api Ambarawa) is a museum located in Ambarawa in Central Java, Indonesia. The museum focuses on the collection of steam locomotives, the remains of the closing of the 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) railway line.
Ambarawa was a military city during the Dutch Colonial Government. King Willem I ordered the construction of a new railway station to enable the government to transport its troops to Semarang. On May 21, 1873 the Ambarawa railway station was built on a 127,500 m² land. This was known back then as Willem I Station. It was finished at the same time as the Kedungjati-Bringin-Tuntang-Ambarawa line.
The station building consists of two main building for waiting room and station master room.
The Willem I Railway Station was originally a transhipment point between the 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) gauge branch from Kedungjati to the northeast and the 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) gauge line onward towards Yogyakarta via Magelang to the south. It is still possible to see that the two sides of the station were built to accommodate different size trains.
On April 8, 1976, the Ambarawa Railway Station was officially converted into the Ambarawa Railway Museum by the governor of Central Java Province at that time Supardjo Rustam. The museum preserves the steam locomotives, which were then coming to the end of their useful lives when the 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) gauge railways of the Indonesian State Railway (the Perusahaan Negara Kereta Api, PNKA) was closed. These are parked in the open air next to the original station.
In 2010, the building of Ambarawa Railway Museum was made heritage building.
The 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) gauge line towards Yogyakarta (runs roughly south-west from Ambarawa) was of particular interest because it contained sections of rack railway between Jambu and Secang, the only such operation in Java. This line beyond Bedono closed in the early 1970s after it was damaged in an earthquake, but had already lost most of its passenger traffic to buses on the parallel road. The line from Kedungjati (runs east initially from Ambarawa) survived into the middle 1970s but saw very little traffic near the end, not least because it was far quicker to travel more directly by road to Semarang. The presence of the rack line meant that there was probably never much through traffic from Semarang to Yogyakarta.
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