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Swiss Museum of Transport

Coordinates: 47°03′10″N 8°20′09″E / 47.05278°N 8.33583°E / 47.05278; 8.33583
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Swiss Museum of Transport
Verkehrshaus der Schweiz
Swiss Museum of Transport is located in Switzerland
Swiss Museum of Transport
Location within Switzerland
EstablishedJuly 1959 (1959-07)
LocationLucerne
TypeTransportation museum
FounderAlfred Waldis [de]
Websiteverkehrshaus.ch
A portion of the outdoor area of the museum showing the Swissair Convair 990 Coronado jet airliner

The Swiss Transport Museum or Verkehrshaus der Schweiz (literally "Transportation House of Switzerland") in Lucerne opened in July 1959 and exhibits all forms of transport including trains, automobiles, ships and aircraft) as well as communication technology. It is Switzerland's most popular museum.[1] The museum also maintains a large collection of work by Hans Erni, a local painter and sculptor.

There are several other attractions in the museum besides the collection, including a planetarium, a large-format cinema and a 1:20,000 scale aerial photograph of Switzerland.

History

The museum traces its history to 1897, when the first attempts at creating a museum of railway equipment were made. Following a national exhibition in 1914, the Swiss Railway Museum was founded by Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) in 1918 in Zurich. The concept eventually grew to encompass all transportation and, in 1942, the Swiss Museum of Transport association was established. Swiss Federal Railways was joined by the Swiss Postal Telegraph and Telephone as well as other private transport, trade, industry, and tourism organizations. However, when no suitable site could be found in Zurich for the planned museum, the city of Lucerne offered the association a 22,500 square metres (242,000 sq ft) site adjacent to Lake Lucerne. Construction began in 1957 and the museum was opened two years later on 1 July 1959. A planetarium was added in 1969 and an aerospace hall in 1972.[2]

In the course of a storm, flooding occurred in the museum on the night of 21-22 August 2005, which inundated some of the displays and damaged contents in the basement rooms of the navigation and aviation departments.[citation needed]

Exhibits

The museum is divided into a variety of thematic areas:

Rail

Amongst the rail transport collection are rolling stock from Switzerland's first ever railway, the Swiss Northern Railway and a SBB Ae 8/14 electric engine. An H0 gauge model railway layout of the Gotthard portrays the northern ramp of the Gotthard railway between Erstfeld station and the Göschenen tunnel, including the three loop/curved tunnels near Wassen. The hall also features a train simulator, which visitors can use to travel through the NRLA base tunnel.[3][failed verification]

Automobiles

The road transport collection on display contains horse-drawn vehicles, bicycles, motorcycles and cars, as well as an exhibition on road safety realized in cooperation with the Swiss Council for Accident Prevention. One major attraction is the Car Theatre, in which a vehicle, selected from a collection of vehicles from all periods of automobile history, is hoisted out of a high-bay warehouse and presented on a stage.[4] The external facades of the hall are covered by 344 Swiss road signs.[5][failed verification] The hall is also home to a special exhibition on the world of logistics. It comprises an AutoStore automated small parts warehouse, an animated miniature distribution centre, a tyre robot, interactive picking stations, and the virtual harvest-to-retail journey of a pineapple.[citation needed]

Aviation

Space

It also houses EURECA, a 4.5 tonne satellite, which is among the few space objects returned safely to earth.

A Spacelab pallet was handed over to the Museum for permanent display on 5 March 2010. The pallet, nicknamed Elvis, was used during the 8-day STS-46 mission, 31 July - 8 August 1992, when ESA astronaut Claude Nicollier was on board Shuttle Atlantis to deploy ESA's European Retrievable Carrier (Eureca) scientific mission and the joint NASA/Italian Space Agency Tethered Satellite System (TSS-1). The Pallet carried TSS-1 in the Shuttle's cargo bay.[6]

Access

The museum is located on the shore of Lake Lucerne in the northern section of the city of Lucerne, some 30 minutes walking time from the town centre. It is served by trains of the Lucerne S-Bahn at the adjacent Lucerne Verkehrshaus railway station, by boat services of the Schifffahrtsgesellschaft des Vierwaldstättersees at the Verkehrshaus-Lido landing stage on the lake, and by the Lucerne trolleybus system. All three provide convenient connections with central Lucerne.[7]

See also

  • Exhibits

References

  1. ^ "Switzerland's Museum of Transportation". Switzerland Tourism. Retrieved 2014-05-19.
  2. ^ "Successful for Over 60 Years". Verkehrshaus (in German). Retrieved 29 November 2021.
  3. ^ "Locomotion on Rails". Verkehrshaus. Retrieved 29 November 2021.
  4. ^ "Car Theatre". Verkehrshaus. Retrieved 29 November 2021.
  5. ^ "Road Transport". Verkehrshaus. Retrieved 29 November 2021.
  6. ^ "ESA hands over a piece of space history".
  7. ^ "Getting there & Layout". Swiss Museum of Transport. Retrieved 2013-01-16.
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