The Train Museum in Mulhouse

Le Cité du Train

First off, the train museum in Mulhouse is huge!

I couldn't really keep track of how many trains there were.

That's how many trains there were!

The first part of the museum is a very large room with something like 30 trains in it organized according to historical significance.

So it's really about train history.

As you walk into the room, you can grab a little machine that will give you a tour of this part of the museum in either English or German.

**As you can see in the photo, it's not easy to take photos in the first part of the museum.

The lighting looks really great when you are inside the museum, but not in your photos...

How the Audio Tour Guide Machines Work:

• When you are near one of the many video screens talking about a particular train or period in history, your machine usually will tell you the story without you having to do anything.

• You have to stay near that particular video screen

  or it will switch to another story when you get close enough to a different video screen.

  And there's no way to fast forward or rewind.

• The story in English will usually start when the video starts.

  If you don't care about watching the video, you can enter the number posted near the video screen and it will play so long as you aren't next to another video screen.

It's not complicated.

But the instructions that the little machine gives you aren't entirely clear.

At least I didn't find them to be clear enough.

Also, this particular room in the train museum in Mulhouse is not well lit, so bring your strongest flash.

It adds to the atmosphere of the museum, but it added nothing nice to my photos.

Then there is a second huge room with good lighting for taking photos, but the really unusual trains are mostly in the first room.

But there are A LOT of trains here.

What You Will Find in the Second Room Are:

• Working trains and other machines with moving parts that turn on at regular intervals

• A video demo of the world-record-setting TGV (high speed train)

• An unbelievably large and detailed model train set

• The former world-record-setting TGVs (high speed trains)

• And at least a few trains from every time period

Our Conclusion

The train museum in Mulhouse itself is impressive.

And you'll learn a lot about trains and train travel in Europe.

There are a lot of things I know I never thought about, particularly regarding the use of trains during World War One and World War Two.

Our pre-teen daughter didn't like it that much, but then would any pre-teen girl like a train museum?

I kind of doubt it.

Our 7 year old daughter found it interesting, but I don't expect either one will be begging to go back.

I think the younger the children are, the more they will like it.

We saw quite a few 4, 5, and 6 year-olds having a ball.

Our own 7 year old liked climbing around the trains and looking at things too.

I suspect that boys would like the train museum in Mulhouse more than girls, particularly if they are big fans of Thomas the Train Engine.

How to Get to the
Cité du Train in Mulhouse?

First off...

It also has the train museum schedule and other useful information...

If you've got a map and you follow the signs to the "Cité du Train" you should be able to find it pretty easily.

And in my opinion...

A GPS is worth its weight in gold!

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