| Ambarawa Railway Museum Museum Kereta Api Ambarawa |
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B 5112, one of the preserved steam locomotive in the Ambarawa Railway Museum. |
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| Established | October 6, 1976[1] |
| 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 6in (1067mm) railway line.
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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.[2]
The Willem I Railway Station was originally a transhipment point between the 4 ft 8½in (1435 mm) gauge branch from Kedungjati to the northeast and the 3 ft 6in (1067 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.[3]
The Ambarawa railway museum was established much later on October 6, 1976 in the Ambarawa Station to preserve the steam locomotives, which were then coming to the end of their useful lives when the 3 ft 6in (1067 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.[3]
The 3 ft 6in (1067 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.[3]
Currently, there is operating heritage railway between Ambarawa-Bedono, operated by steam locomotive. In addition, there is also tourist railway between Ambarawa-Tuntang.
The museum collected 21 steam locomotives. Currently four locomotives are operational. Other collections of the museum include old telephones, morse telegraph equipments, old bells and signals equipments, and some antique furnitures.[3]
Some of the steam locomotives are the 2 B25 0-4-2T B2502/3 which is from the original fleet of 5 supplied to the line about 100 years ago (A third locomotive (B2501) is preserved in a park in the town nearby.) The E10 0-10-0T E1060 which was originally delivered to West Sumatra in the 1960s for working the coal railway, but later was brought to Java, and a conventional locomotive 2-6-0T C1218 which was restored to working order in 2006.[3]