Tiruchirappalli Rail Museum attempts to display southern railway history

The Tiruchirappalli Rail Museum is where you should head to this summer for an educational tour of the Indian railways. The museum is just the right place to understand south Indian train travel and its development.
A first of its kind for Southern Railways, the museum has a total area of 9,000 sq ft, and is in a double-storey building. The history of train travel has been documented in three halls on the ground floor here, going back to the early Victorian era.

The southern chapter of Indian Railways started way back in 1859, with the first train leaving from Nagapattinam, and going to Thanjavur via Tiruvallur. The southern zone has gone through numerous changes since then, and the rail museums aim to showcase the importance that the railways had on the southern states since then.

Officially, three state railways merged in the south to give birth to the Southern Railways. The three state railways were Madras and Southern Mahratta Railway, the South Indian Railway, and the Mysore State Railway. The museum houses old clocks that used to be at the old train stations, and you can also see foreign-made traditional locomotives that are out of use now. Also available is a 1921 ticket punching machine, and there are numerous photographs and pictures with fascinating trivia from history.