Museum of Industry and Railway in Silesia in Jaworzyna Śląska

Lower Silesia abounds in many historic castles and palaces, historic mines as well as places associated with weaving. Meanwhile, the treasures of the region are also monuments of technology not necessarily associated only with the mining industry. Along the created Lower Silesian Industrial Monuments Route, one may encounter a beauty spot on a European scale - it is the Museum of Railways in Silesia in Jaworzyna Śląska.

This open-air museum is located on the huge site of a former roundhouse dating back to 1906 (it was renamed a locomotive depot as the rolling stock changed over time). In the interwar period it underwent several modernizations, and after World War II the roundhouse in Jaworzyna was the most important in Lower Silesia in view of the destruction of the Wrocław junction and the deelectrification of the railroad lines by the Soviets. Current or emergency repairs were carried out here, and to carry out these tasks the place was equipped with a number of buildings and tools: including a gantry, a ratchet, boiler washing stations, machine tool workshops and a forge.

In 2004, the municipality of Jaworzyna Śląska took over the facilities from the Polish Railways, leasing the property to the emerging museum. Numerous locomotives, carriages, workshop machinery and buildings were taken over, which, much renovated, can now be visited: including an oil depot, a place where lubricants for locomotives were stored; a coal crane, a crane used for loading coal; turntable with a fan-shaped hall; former control room built in the late 1950s and early 1960s by the hands of railwaymen as part of social deeds, etc. The museum continuously collects locomotives, draisines, industrial machinery, steam locomotives and railroad infrastructure from the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

Permanent exhibitions present the history of railroads and railroad technology from the 19^th century to the communist era; the ODRA workshop with the only ODRA 1305 digital computing machine in Lower Silesia; you can visit the Railway Cashier's Office, Railway Labour Medicine or the Railway Printing House. In the spring of 2014, the so-called steam locomotive route was launched on the railroad siding. This gave visitors the opportunity to take a ride on historic rolling stock, during which museum staff present the most important technical facilities of the former steam locomotive depot. Children will surely find it interesting to know more about their idol - the steam locomotive named Thomas, the hero of the "Thomas and Friends" cartoon.