The fan-shaped roundhouse is not a museum piece: the turntable still turns.
Inside, a shed as long as a real track, with steam locomotives lined up, a wagon from Japan's first railway line and a first-series shinkansen that you can walk through from one end to the other. Outside there is the fan-shaped roundhouse around the turntable, a facility still in use: at certain times a steam locomotive really does pull a carriage, and that ride is paid for separately.
Kyoto's railway museum, inside Umekōji Park and on the site of the city's former railway depot, twenty minutes' walk from the central exit of Kyoto Station or one train stop away, at Umekōji-Kyōto-Nishi Station on the JR Sagano Line.
ℹ️ Open 10:00–17:00, last entry at 16:30. Ticket 1,500 yen, 1,300 for university and high school students, 500 for junior high and elementary school pupils, 200 from age three. The steam train ride costs 300 yen extra (100 up to junior high) and the driving simulator 100. ⚠️ Closed on Wednesdays, but **not** on public holidays or during school holiday periods, when it stays open; closed from 30 December to 1 January. The museum publishes a day-by-day opening calendar, and if you have a Wednesday in your plans it is worth checking.
🚉 Umekoji-Kyotonishi · 5 min walk
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For an official collaboration with the series, the museum fitted the ‘Mugen’ plate to the historic JGR Class 8620 steam locomotive, unit 8630, from the same Taishō period as the train in the film ‘Mugen Train’. No one, however, states that this particular engine was the direct inspiration for the design: what is documented is the themed collaboration, not the model.
Sources: fujisan.co.jp · walkerplus.com · kyotorailwaymuseum.jp
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