National Railway Museum

The National Railway Museum in Kadugannawa, Sri Lanka, displays vintage locomotives, carriages, and railway artifacts, celebrating the nation’s rich railway history.

Planning your visit

Sri Lanka's railway was built by the British from 1864 to move tea and coffee down from the hill country to Colombo, and the engineering involved in climbing to Nuwara Eliya through tunnels, cuttings and switchbacks makes the line one of the more spectacular journeys in Asia. The National Railway Museum at Kadugannawa sits beside that route, on the ascent to Kandy.

The collection holds vintage locomotives including steam engines, carriages, signalling equipment, telegraph apparatus, tickets, uniforms and photographs. Much of it is outdoors and shows its age, which suits a museum about a working system rather than a preserved one.

Kadugannawa itself sits at a dramatic point on the old road, near the Dawson Tower commemorating the engineer who built the pass.

The wider context is the more memorable part: taking the train up to Ella or Nuwara Eliya remains one of the things visitors to Sri Lanka most consistently rate highly, and the museum explains the system that produced it. Bookable options combine the museum with a tea factory and Kandy city tour. Current availability is shown below.