News

We're rebuilding, but we are still open!
We are currently in the process of rebuilding the museum to improve our ability to create new, interesting exhibitions - and also to make it easier for our disabled visitors to access our balcony. The construction period will last until early April 2010. The museum will be open as usual throughout the construction period. Even so, some sections of the ordinary exhibitions may be inaccessible at times and other irregularities may occur. To compensate for any shortcomings or difficulties our visitors might experience during the construction period, we will issue paying visitors with special free tickets from 2 January. The tickets will be valid from 1 June - 30 December, i.e. when the museum is back to normal.


New vehicles in our exhibition
At Track 3 of our exhibition, it is now possible to see a carriage and a locomotive which once belonged to Denmark's private railways and which have never before been exhibited at the museum.
The locomotive is called “SNNB 3” and comes from the Stubbekøbing-Nykøbing-Nysted line. It is a tender locomotive that was built for the opening of the railway in 1910 by the German company J. A. Maffei. The SNNB 3 is rather powerful as it had to pull heavy trains loaded with sugar beets for the Cooperative Sugar Factor in Nykøbing Falster. When the railway closed in 1966, the locomotive was removed from service and sold to a private owner, who resold it to the Danish Railway Museum 31 years later. It arrived here earlier this year and has now been refurbished for the exhibition.
The carriage, however, was already in excellent condition when it arrived at the museum! This is because it had previously been thoroughly restored by the KLK Locomotive Club, whose members spent 3,300 hours on the project, and was used this season for the club's rides. The carriage was delivered for the opening of the Ryumgaard-Gjerrild-Grenaa Railway in 1911 by Vognfabrikken Scandia in Randers as C 3. It was originally designed to seat 50, all on wooden benches in the third class. In 1952 and 1953, some of the seats were removed to make room for a WC, after which only 46 seats were left. In 1956, the line was closed and the carriage withdrawn from service. After serving a variety of functions - including as a workmen's shed - it was taken over by KLK in 1977 which, as mentioned, meticulously refurbished this rather maltreated vehicle. The carriage will be at the museum in Odense throughout the spring of 2010 - until KLK again will use it for their vintage train rides.


Talk to the model train
The Danish Railway Museum has refurbished one of its model railways so visitors can now control the trains by talking to them - and the system can understand instructions given in Danish, English and German. The IT company GamesOnTrack delivered the hardware and software for the railway. A very successful trial run of the system was carried out during the autumn mid-term break. Once the visitors had learned what to say and how to control their voice, the railway worked perfectly. Many of the users felt this was “very cool”.