Railway Museum — Attraction in Madrid

Find a slice of the spectacular history of rail in Spain. Carriages are perfectly dressed as they would have been so long ago. A kinder and more dignified time…

Tucked away in the old Delicias Station, the Museo del Ferrocarril is where time doesn’t just pass — it rides the rails. This isn’t your polished, high-tech museum. It’s something better: raw, nostalgic, and full of charm.

The moment you enter, the smell of old iron and wood hits you — in the best way. Locomotives from different eras rest on the old platforms like sleeping giants: steam engines, diesel beasts, and early electrics, each with its own story. Some you can climb aboard, others you admire from the outside. Either way, they spark something — awe, maybe. Or a sudden urge to buy a train ticket and disappear.

There’s something cinematic about it all. The lighting is dramatic, the silence broken only by distant whistles or kids pretending they’re conductors. Vintage posters, old uniforms, station clocks frozen in time — the details make it feel like you’ve stepped into a black-and-white film.

It’s especially magical for kids, train lovers, and history buffs. But even if you’re none of those, there’s a quiet romance to it all. A kind of slow travel that still lingers, even standing still.

Verdict: More than a museum — a platform between past and present. Unpolished, unforgettable, and...

I dont give bad reviews lightly. We were very excited to visit this train museum since my toddler is a fan of trains. However, after taking metros and arriving here finally, we realized that it is prohibitted to enter many carriages except for maybe 2 of them. There is an interractive simulated driving pod that is finally interractive. There was no sign saying that my 2 year-old shouldn't touch it. The staff first snapped at us that my kid was too strong, he may break it, while he was simply trying to figure out which buttons to push under my help. After he got the knack of it and started to enjoy the driving itself, the staff came again saying our time is up and we should leave, while nobody was waiting at all. And she fumbled out a hidden sign saying that kids under 4 years old shouldn't enter, she said she already gave us mercy to play it for some time. I felt very sorry for this experience. Somehow i felt it was either unclear conveyed that there were certain rules, or staffs tend to carry them out in a very rigid way that we felt very unwelcomed at all. It could be...

The building is not to be confused with the station opened in 1996 by Cercanías Madrid called Delicias.

The station was opened in March 1880 by King Alfonso XII and Queen Maria Cristina. It was commissioned by a short-lived railway company, the Compañía de los Caminos de Hierro de Ciudad Real a Badajoz, which had recently opened a line from Ciudad Real to the capital. One reason for the choice of Delicias as the site of the terminus was the proximity of an existing line, the Ferrocarril de contorno de Madrid, which served industrial areas of Madrid.

In the year the station was opened, the railway company was absorbed by a larger rival, Compañía de los Ferrocarriles de Madrid a Zaragoza y Alicante (MZA). MZA had the use of Atocha station, and did not need Delicias station, which it transferred to a third company, the Compañía de los Ferrocarriles de Madrid a Cáceres y Portugal. An international service to Portugal was developed, but the station never achieved a high volume of passengers, and it closed to passenger...