Ambarawa Railway Museum

First view of Willem I station (now Ambarawa station) before being enlarged.

Ambarawa was a city that was used for military purpose during the Dutch colonial administrative and not far from this station, there's Fort Willem I or known as Benteng Pendem by locals. This station was named Willem I, because it was built in honor to the services of the King of the Netherlands William I. The colonial government of Dutch East Indies under the command of Governor-General L. A. J. Baron Sloet van de Beele ordered the construction of a new railway station to facilitate the mobilization of Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL) troops from and to Semarang. On 21 May 1873, the Ambarawa railway station was built on a 127,500 m² land.[2] It was finished at the same time as the Kedungjati–Bringin–Tuntang–Ambarawa line by Nederlandsch-Indische Spoorweg Maatschappij (NIS).[3]

The station building consists of two main building for waiting room and station master room.

The Willem I railway station was originally a transhipment point between the 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) gauge branch from Kedungjati to the northeast and the 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) gauge line onward towards Yogyakarta via Magelang to the south. It is still possible to see that the two sides of the station were built to accommodate different size trains.[5]

On 8 April 1976,[3] the Ambarawa railway station was officially converted into the Ambarawa Railway Museum by the governor of Central Java Province at that time Supardjo Rustam. The museum preserves the steam locomotives, which were then coming to the end of their useful lives when the 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) gauge railways of the Indonesian State Railway (the Perusahaan Negara Kereta Api, PNKA) was closed. These are parked in the open air next to the original station.[5]

In 2010, the building of Ambarawa Railway Museum was made heritage building.[3][6]

Railway line

The 1067mm line that connects Magelang station and Willem I station, the station that is now a museum.

The construction line between Ambarawa–Samarang (or called Semarang today) was a package with Samarang NIS–Gundih–Solo Balapan–Lempuyangan line. In 1869, after Gundih, the NIS was continued the line to Bringin and ended at Ambarawa. Finally, Samarang–Vorstenlanden (now Surakarta and Jogjakarta) and Kedungjati to Ambarawa lines were completed on 21 May 1873.[7][8][9] After that, the NIS continued to build rack line to Secang with the line passing through the steep contours and difficult topography in the mountainous area. This line connected the Dutch East Indies military stronghold in Magelang city with Fort Willem I in Ambarawa, and it was finished on 1 February 1905.[10] The 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) gauge line towards Djocja Toegoe (Yogyakarta) (runs roughly south-west from Ambarawa) was of particular interest because it contained sections of rack railway between Jambu and Secang which have 6.5% gradient, the only such operation in Java. This line beyond Bedono closed in the early 1970s after it was damaged in an earthquake, but had already lost most of its passenger traffic to buses on the parallel road. The line from Kedungjati (runs east initially from Ambarawa) survived into the middle 1970s but saw very little traffic near the end, not least because it was far quicker to travel more directly by road to Semarang. The presence of the rack line meant that there was probably never much through traffic from Semarang to Yogyakarta.[5]

The museum is open daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. in a week. Currently, there are 3 kinds of heritage tourism trains running, the excursion trains run on Ambarawa–Jambu–Bedono (mountainous rack line) pulled by B25 02 or B25 03 and Ambarawa–Tuntang (flat line) pulled by B51 12. While, the vintage train pulled by hydraulic-diesel D301 24 also on Ambarawa-Tuntang line, could be rented. The excursion trains are rented and can be booked around 2–3 weeks before departure, with an exceptional vintage train runs regularly (pulled by hydraulic-diesel D301 24) with the ticket price listed. Admission to the museum is divided into 3 categories :

1. For kids (3-12 years old) and students : Rp 10.000,00 (US$0.67)

2. Adults (local) and scholars : Rp 20.000 (US$1.34)

3. Foreigners : Rp 30.000 (US$2.01)[11]

CC5029 (ex-SS1629), one of the 2-6-6-0 "Denver" type mallet locomotive which preserved as static display, during colonial time it also known as Bergkoningin (Queen of the Mountains), because it was used in the mountainous line in West Java. Later it was known as Si Gombar (The Monster} due to its huge size.

The museum collected 26 steam locomotives from several railway companies of Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) which were acquired by Djawatan Kereta Api (DKA) or Department of Railways of the Republic of Indonesia. Currently four locomotives are operational. Other collections of the museum include old telephones, Morse telegraph equipment, old bells and signals equipment, and some antique furniture.[5][12]

B25 02 (ex-NIS Class 232), one of the three locomotives that are still active

Some of the worked steam locomotives are the German builder, two Esslingen B25 classes 0-4-2RT B25 02 and B25 03 (ex-NIS Class 232 and 233) which are from the original fleet of 5 supplied to the line more than 100 years ago (a third locomotive, the B25 01 (ex-NIS Class 231) is preserved as static display in a park of the town nearby). The Ten Coupled 0-10-0RT E10 class, PNKA E10 60, which was originally worked to West Sumatra in the 1960s for coal transports, was brought to Java for repair and later returned again as excursion train at Sawahlunto, and a Mogul Hartmann 2-6-0T C1218 (ex-SS 457) which was restored to working order in 2006, but transferred to Solo to working as excursion train as the request of Surakarta city government, named Sepur Kluthuk Jaladara.[5] The museum also have a small diesel switcher D300 class 0-8-0D D300 23, previously based at Cepu, an old UH-295 crane from Semarang, and the restored Hanomag 4-4-0 two-cylinder compound DKA B51 12 (ex-SS Class 612) worked for excursion train on Ambarawa-Tuntang line. Other locomotive collections are type C1240, C1603, C2821, D5106, B5210, CC5029 and many others.[3]

• 
  Esslingen B25 03 rack tank locomotive at the shed
• 
  Krupp Diesel hydraulic D301 24 was shunting at Ambarawa station
• 
  A General Electric diesel electric CC 200 15 as the first generation of diesel–electric engine preserved by Indonesian Railway Preservation Society (IRPS) at Ambarawa.

• List of museums and cultural institutions in Indonesia
• Bondowoso Rail and Train Museum

• Lenzi, Iola (2004). Museums of Southeast Asia. Singapore: Archipelago Press. p. 200. ISBN 981-4068-96-9.

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