Tashkent Railway Museum: Locomotives, Tickets, Hours
Tashkent Railway Museum: the 1914 Ov-1534, a P36 and a German Kriegslok beside the main station, plus hours, closed days and what tickets cost now.
Engine Ov-1534 left the works in 1914, rated at about 700 horsepower and good for roughly 55 km/h. Russian railwaymen called the class "Ovechka", the little sheep, and this one is the oldest thing parked at the Tashkent Railway Museum, an open-air yard of locomotives beside Tashkent's main station on Turkiston Street. It's cheap, it's hands-on, and it's the one place in the capital where the story of how Russia's empire actually reached Central Asia is told in steel rather than on a wall panel.
If you've got a spare 90 minutes before a train, this is the obvious way to spend them. The station entrance is a few minutes' walk away.
What's in the yard
The museum opened on 4 August 1989, timed to Railway Workers' Day, to mark a century of railways in Central Asia. Counts differ slightly between sources, but the collection is roughly 13 steam locomotives, 17 or 18 diesels and 3 electrics, plus passenger cars, wagons and track-maintenance machinery. Everything sits on sidings laid out in a long strip, so you walk a line rather than a loop.
Three engines are worth finding on purpose:
- Ov-1534 (1914). The little sheep. A freight engine from the class that did the donkey work on Russian lines before the Revolution. Its small driving wheels tell you it was built to haul, not to hurry.
- The P36, nicknamed "General" for the red stripe along its side. Rated at around 2,500 to 3,000 horsepower depending on the source, the most powerful steam engine in the collection, and the one people photograph. It's a 1950s express design with a smooth casing, and it looks like a much later machine than it is.
- TE-5200. A German wartime Kriegslok (the Class 52 "war locomotive"), built in Germany during the Second World War and taken into Soviet service afterwards. It's a plain, stripped-down engine designed to be built fast, and that austerity is the point.
The collection also takes in rolling stock from Czechoslovakia, Poland and the USA, a TE3 twin-unit diesel (the example here dates from 1966), a TEM2 shunter and a VL60K electric. There's a double-deck observation car with a glass dome that the museum describes as the last surviving one from the Leningrad carriage works, though we haven't found a second source confirming that claim.
You can climb into most of the cabs. Staff don't hover, levers still move, and the steps are steep and oily, so shoes with grip beat sandals.
Why steam disappeared early here
This is the part most visitors walk past without noticing. According to Uzbekistan Railways' own history page, regular diesel operation began on the Ashgabat routes in 1931, and by 1974 the Central Asian Railway was the first network in the USSR to switch completely to diesel traction. Water is scarce in the Karakum and Kyzylkum, and a steam engine drinks it by the tonne. So the dozen-odd steam locomotives here are survivors of an era that ended in Central Asia years before it ended on the Russian plains, and the diesel half of the yard is really the local success story.
Keep that in mind and the TE3 stops looking like a boring green box.
The Central Asian Railway, briefly
Construction of the Transcaspian line started in November 1880 on the Caspian shore, as a military railway. It reached Ashgabat in 1885 and opened to Samarkand in May 1888, once the builders had bridged the Amu Darya. Then it stopped for a decade. The extension to Tashkent and the Fergana Valley came at the end of the 1890s; sources put the arrival in Tashkent at 1898 or 1899, and the line was renamed the Central Asian Railway around the time it passed to the ministry. In January 1906 the Orenburg–Tashkent line opened, which gave the region a direct link to central Russia for the first time (cotton went north, soldiers and settlers came south).
Uzbekistan's state railway company, O'zbekiston Temir Yo'llari, was set up in 1994. The high-speed Afrosiyob trains you'll probably ride later are its descendants; our guide to riding the Afrosiyob covers those Spanish-built Talgo sets.
Does the museum explain any of this well? Not really. There's an exhibition carriage with uniforms, signalling gear and communication equipment, but labels are in Uzbek and Russian. Read the history before you go, and the yard makes far more sense.
Tickets, hours and photos
Here's the honest version: we couldn't find a current official price list. The national tourism portal's listing gives hours and the address but no fee, and reported foreigner prices have risen steadily. Treat the table below as a guide, not a quote (last checked: September 2026).
| Item | What sources report | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Hours | 09:00–18:00, lunch 13:00–14:00 | Tourism portal: Wed–Sun 09:00–18:00; lunch break reported by Orexca |
| Closed | Monday and Tuesday | Excursion train and museum carriage don't run either |
| Entry (foreigners) | 10,500 som (2019), 25,000 som (summer 2023), about US$3.50 in later reviews | Budget 25,000–50,000 som in cash |
| Local rate, early 2023 | 4,200 som adult, 2,000 som child | Foreigners pay more; the booth has an English notice |
| Excursion train | 4,200 som (2023) | Short guided ride, mainly weekends |
| Photography | Free in 2019; some later reviews mention a separate charge | Ask at the booth before you start shooting |
Our take: carry small notes. Card terminals at small Tashkent museums are hit and miss, and arguing about a camera fee in Russian isn't how anyone wants to spend their afternoon.
The phone numbers published by the tourism portal are +998 71 299 72 77 and +998 71 299 70 40. If you're visiting on a public holiday, ring first, because hours on those days aren't published anywhere we could find.
Getting there and fitting it in
The address is 6 Turkiston Street. Take the metro to Toshkent station on the Uzbekistan line, which is the stop for the main railway station, and walk a few minutes; the Tashkent metro guide has the line map. The fare is 2,500 som by card or app (3,000 in cash) from 1 October 2026 (Gazeta.uz, last checked: September 2026).
Timing is where people get caught out. Most intercity trains leave from this station, and it's tempting to pair the museum with a morning departure. Just remember the Monday–Tuesday closure, the one-hour lunch break, and that station security plus ticket checks can eat 30 minutes. A late-morning visit ending by 13:00, then lunch, then an afternoon train works. So does an arrival day, if your train gets in before 16:00 and you can leave bags at the station.
Go early in summer. The yard has almost no shade, the steel soaks up heat, and by mid-afternoon in July the cab interiors are ovens. Autumn and spring are far kinder. In winter the place is nearly empty, which is great for photos.
Who is it not for? Anyone expecting a curated museum with English audio guides and interactive screens. It's a working railway yard with paint, rust and wedding photographers (it's a popular backdrop for them at weekends). If you like engineering, or you've got kids who need to climb something after a morning of madrasahs, it beats most things on a first visit to Tashkent.
And if the trip itself runs on rails, the overview of Uzbekistan's rail network shows where today's lines run, which is a neat way to connect the rusting Ovechka with the train you'll be sitting on tomorrow.