National Transport Museum, Bulgaria - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The National Transport Museum in Rousse

Rousse

Ruse is the fifth-largest city in Bulgaria. Ruse is situated in the northeastern part of the country, on the right bank of the Danube, opposite the Romanian city of Giurgiu, from the capital Sofia and from the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast...

, Bulgaria

Bulgaria

Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...

, is situated on the bank of the Danube

Danube

The Danube is a river in the Central Europe and the Europe's second longest river after the Volga. It is classified as an international waterway....

, in the country's first railway station, built in 1866.

The museum

Exhibits are laid out both inside and outside the old station. Among the exhibits outside the building are more than ten steam engine

Steam engine

A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid.Steam engines are external combustion engines, where the working fluid is separate from the combustion products. Non-combustion heat sources such as solar power, nuclear power or geothermal energy may be...

s, including the oldest steam engine preserved in the country, built in England in 1865, and various railroad carriage

Carriage

A carriage is a wheeled vehicle for people, usually horse-drawn; litters and sedan chairs are excluded, since they are wheelless vehicles. The carriage is especially designed for private passenger use and for comfort or elegance, though some are also used to transport goods. It may be light,...

s, including the personal carriages of the Kings Ferdinand of Bulgaria and Boris III of Bulgaria

Boris III of Bulgaria

Boris III the Unifier, Tsar of Bulgaria , originally Boris Klemens Robert Maria Pius Ludwig Stanislaus Xaver , son of Ferdinand I, came to the throne in 1918 upon the abdication of his father, following the defeat of the Kingdom of Bulgaria during World War I...

, as well as the carriage of the Turkish

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

sultan

Sultan

Sultan is a title with several historical meanings. Originally, it was an Arabic language abstract noun meaning "strength", "authority", "rulership", and "dictatorship", derived from the masdar سلطة , meaning "authority" or "power". Later, it came to be used as the title of certain rulers who...

of 1866.

the museum is underfunded, the heritage engines and railcars are stored in the open air without almost any maintenance, and the humid air from the nearby Danube accelerates significantly their decay.

The museum was named the National Museum of Railway Transport and Communications on 26 June 1996, commemorating the 100th anniversary of railroads in Bulgaria, and the building was declared a historical landmark. The museum's exhibits have been used in the films Capitan Petko Voivoda , Records of Bulgarian Uprisings , and the Russian-Bulgarian production Turkish Gambit.

The old railway station

The construction of the old Rousse Railway Station was commenced in 1863 and completed three years later. The station is situated in the (then) outskirts of Rousse

Rousse

, near the high bank of the Danube

Danube

The Danube is a river in the Central Europe and the Europe's second longest river after the Volga. It is classified as an international waterway....

, opposite to Giurgiu

Giurgiu

Giurgiu is the capital city of Giurgiu County, Romania, in the Greater Wallachia. It is situated amid mud-flats and marshes on the left bank of the Danube facing the Bulgarian city of Rousse on the opposite bank. Three small islands face the city, and a larger one shelters its port, Smarda...

. It is not functioning now.

Building the railway station was the beginning of a larger project – the Rousse-Varna

Varna

Varna is the largest city and seaside resort on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast and third-largest in Bulgaria after Sofia and Plovdiv, with a population of 334,870 inhabitants according to Census 2011...

railway, executed under English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, and Austria-Hungarian

Austria-Hungary

Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...

pressure. The new railway was intended to shorten journeys from London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

to Istanbul

Istanbul

Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...

by five or six days. Its architectural and constructive plans were provided by the Birkleck brothers . A water tower, a supportive river wall, and a couple of other facilities were built nearby, using white limestone

Limestone

Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate . Many limestones are composed from skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral or foraminifera....

from nearby villages. In 1866 the station's construction was completed, and it had a waiting room, a room for the station manager, one for the clerk in charge, and some other premises.

The exploitation administration, headquartered in London, occupied the building shortly after its opening. Most of the clerks and the supporting staff were Bulgarians. Georgi Tsonchev was the supervisor general of the railway to Varna. Ilarion Dragostinov

Ilarion Dragostinov

Ilarion Ivanov Dragostinov , nicknamed Arbanascheto was a Bulgarian revolutionary and an important figure in the organization and direction of the anti-Ottoman April Uprising of 1876....

, Ivan Vedar

Ivan Vedar

Ivan Vedar , born Danail Nikolov, a.k.a. Yani Ingiliz, Johny English, Ovanes Efendi , Denkooglu , was born in Razgrad, present Bulgaria in 1827...

, and Radi Ivanov worked there as telegraph operators; Georgi Ikonomov was a shunter operator. The railway station developed massive passenger and cargo activity for its time, partly due to the neighbouring harbour.

After opening the Rousse-Tarnovo railway in 1900 with its first station Rousse South, the old station was renamed Rousse East, and remained functional until the launching of a classification yard

Classification yard

A classification yard or marshalling yard is a railroad yard found at some freight train stations, used to separate railroad cars on to one of several tracks. First the cars are taken to a track, sometimes called a lead or a drill...

in June 1954, when it was transformed into (a part of the) National Transport Museum.

The museum

The old railway station

See also