The open-air exhibition of West-Pomeranian narrow-gauge railways is a department of The National Museum in Szczecin. It employs five people who maintain the exhibits and serve the visitors. We take care of historic steam locomotives, carriages and other railway devices. 

The Heritage
The exhibition presents West-Pomeranian narrow-gauge railways rolling stock. The narrow-gauge railways on the Polish side of post-war border were a unique case in Europe in terms of the lines length and density (on the German one, they were dismantled by the Soviet army and, apart from a small fragment on the island of Usedom, never rebuilt). The network spread from Kołobrzeg in the north to Stargard in the south and from the port of Stepnica in the west to Bobolice in the east. It employed around 1000 railwaymen. The network taken over by the Polish state transported up to one million passengers a year and carried around half a million tons of cargo a year. At the beginning of the previous century, it was the bloodstream of Junker economy, connecting landed properties, starch factories, distilleries, dairies and sawmills with the network of “normal” railways. Junker economy management style influenced post-war Poland, where State Agricultural Farms (PGR) took over the function of landed properties. The establishment, development and collapse of narrow-gauge railways are a classical example of functioning of a particular branch of the economy, firstly in industrial capitalism, and then in economic statism of Polish People’s Republic. After a century of operation, the network became abandoned overnight.