In December last year we visited a Train Museum while on vacations in Japan. Poppo Town is located at Annaka City near the Nagano border. As we stayed in Karuizawa it only took about an hour’s drive to the museum.  The place was old as compared to the other museum that we have been however the kids did had fun trying out the different rides and viewing the different steam engines.

The kids playground area with the mini train rides were the main attraction in the museum for the kids.  As we were there near to closing time the place was nearly deserted  and there wasn’t any one manning the rides. The kids decided to take pictures of the trains instead.

This must be the tiniest steam engine which we saw that day. It ran on charcoal and you could even sit on it and go for a short ride around the track. We gave it a pass at 200 yen a person it would come up to quite a hefty sum if the kids and I rode on it.

This black steam engine was one of those on display . It wasn’t open for viewing so we could only walk around and admire it from the sides.

There was a mini train which would take visitors around the area. However as the area wasn’t that big we decided to take a walk instead.

This steam engine which we spotted reminded me of the Thomas and Train engines which the boys loved playing with when they were much younger.

This steam engine had coaches and must have been used to transport passengers across towns back then when it was functioning.

We saw quite a few different colored passenger trains in the train yard.  Some of them looked as it they were about 40-50 years old.

We managed to enter one of the cabins of the train and boys had fun pretending to be train drivers. There were many different switches and levers on the control panel of a train.

The boys had fun on this ride. they had to pull the levers down to get the platform to move in the direction of their choice. It was certainly an unusual mode of transportation.

Have you been to a train museum lately?