Nagasaki Electric Tramway Museum (Defunct)
The Nagasaki Electric Tramway Museum (長崎路面電車資料館) was a railway museum above the tram tracks at Atomic Bomb Museum Station in Nagasaki Seiyō-kan shopping mall. It offered free entry to everyone, and featured information and artefacts on the Nagasaki Electric Tramway.
Nagasaki Seiyō-kan was a shopping mall operated by Nagaden Create, a subsidiary of Nagasaki Electric Tramway, but faced declining visitors and shops thanks to the pandemic, and was permanently closed in May 2023. In August 2023, JR Kyushu purchased the land and building from Nagasaki Electric Tramway, and began demolition work.
Atomic Bomb Museum Station
Access to Atomic Bomb Museum Station is easy with frequent Nagasaki Electric Tramway Line 1 and Line 3 trams on this shared trunk main line.
Nagasaki Seiyō-kan is legally classified as a railway tunnel, with the tram track running through the building.
Atomic Bomb Museum Station, as the name suggests, also serves Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum, up the hill from the station.
Nagasaki Seiyō-kan Shopping Mall
Heading in to Nagasaki Seiyō-kan Shopping Mall.
Nagasaki Electric Tramway Museum is on Level 3 of Nagasaki Seiyō-kan Shopping Mall.
Nagasaki Electric Tramway Museum
Nagasaki Electric Tramway Museum is located in a big shop lot on the top-most floor of Nagasaki Seiyō-kan Shopping Mall.
The Nagasaki Electric Tramway Museum opened from 11am to 5pm.
On first look, Nagasaki Electric Tramway Museum offered a wealth of information hanging from the walls. There was also some gear shifting sounds from an enthusiastic kid making announcements sitting in the mockup cab.
It is rare for me to document museums now on RailTravel Station as I realised writing the information down would be a double job and would defeat the purpose of the museum existing, and people may not even visit it after reading the article.
However, as the Nagasaki Electric Tramway Museum is now permanently closed, I shall just leave a massive photo dump here for historical purposes.
Conclusion
The Nagasaki Electric Tramway Museum had lots of artefacts and information throughout the history and course of the Nagasaki Electric Tramway. Unfortunately, the closure of Nagasaki Seiyō-kan shopping mall and Nagasaki Electric Tramway Museum is another part of Nagasaki Electric Tramway’s history, but will not be documented in the museum as it is ironically closed.
It is indeed rare to visit a free of charge railway museum in a touristy town, and I thank Nagasaki Electric Tramway for opening the Nagasaki Electric Tramway Museum before, and I feel appreciative that I had the opportunity to visit it when I was in Nagasaki, not knowing that it would be closed 3 months after my trip.