Reading this week:

• A Fortune-Teller Told Me by Tiziano Terzani (not quite the book I remember)

The same weekend that we were resting and relaxing at Banana Island we also went to the world-famous Sierra Leone Railway Museum. It was really great! I had been itching to go to a museum in Sierra Leone (there are three), but they are typically only open on weekdays which makes it tough to go unless we have a holiday Monday or Friday off. So when we had the chance I insisted we leap at it.

The Railway Museum is pretty nice and is a labor of love for all involved. It was started in the aftermath of the civil war when noted Train Guy Steve Davies found that some engines and rolling stock were laying forlorn in the former Cline Town railway works. They managed to get a railway museum up and running and have since managed to visually restore the items on display.

When we visited we were the only visitors and they were pretty excited to have us. I think most of the traffic at the museum is school groups and it looks like they do a really great job teaching all the kids about trains and stuff. We paid our entry fee and were taken around on a guided tour. We managed to briefly visit the national museum and also got taken on a guided tour, so it seems on-your-own museum browsing isn’t really a thing around here. The first part of the tour focused on the history of the museum itself before going into the history of railways in Sierra Leone. The purpose of the railways was of course colonial-era extraction but hey I suppose we can’t hold that against the trains themselves. The railway eventually folded up shop at the behest of the IMF told the government in the ‘70s. According to the group of train enthusiasts that run the museum, this was due to the evil machinations of the car lobby. This tracks with most train vs. car experience in history, so once again boo stupid car lobby.

For train cars, one of the ones they are most proud of is the train car that was supposed to be used by Queen Elizabeth II when she visited Sierra Leone. I guess the train ride never happened and the train car wound up fairly derelict but the museum has restored the exterior. The interior is bare (they’re working on it), but on the inside are pictures of Queen Elizabeth and signs about Sierra Leone’s relationship with the monarchy. Our tour guide certainly knew how to lead a tour because one of the first things he did was request my phone so we could run outside the train car so we could stand on the back on the reviewing platform and wave to a non-existent crowd like Queen Elizabeth would have while he took pictures. Extremely cute. Other train cars they had included a steel goods car and a payment car for the railway to pay its employees.

Besides the cars they had the engines. Most of the engines they had were pretty small diesel engines from the latter part of the railway’s history. They are pretty cute! They had some even smaller steam engines and a larger steam engine. These all look pretty complete but I think are a far way off from running. What does run however is one of those railway pump cars you always see in cartoons and stuff. They got it on a short length of track and under the careful supervision of our tour guide we got to take it for a spin which was a hoot. An absolute delight.

We wrapped up our tour in the giftshop where I bought a marvelous little booklet on the history of the museum and the railway and then my super amazing wife got two postcards with old photos of the railway which is cool. This is not the most expansive railway museum in the world but the staff is enthusiastic and the history is neat and I mean you gotta go see trains. Last week I was worried about becoming a bird guy but now I think I might become a train guy. Of course, isn’t every man a train guy at heart?