Eisenbahnmuseum Bochum

The Eisenbahnmuseum Bochum occupies the Bahnbetriebswerk Bochum-Dahlhausen, a steam depot built between 1916 and 1918 in the Ruhr valley south-west of the city. Its job was coal: locomotives working the heavy trains out of the Ruhr coalfield came here for coal, water, sand and oil, and at its peak the depot employed more than 400 people servicing up to 50 engines. The coal crisis of the late 1950s and the switch from steam to diesel ended that, and the depot closed as an independent Bw on 1 August 1969.

Volunteers moved in the same year. After eight years of clearing and repair, the Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Eisenbahngeschichte opened the museum in 1977; since 2011 the site has been run by the Stiftung Eisenbahnmuseum Bochum, with around 120 mostly voluntary staff. The grounds cover roughly 46,000 square metres (about 11 acres), which makes this one of the largest railway museums in Germany and an anchor point on the Route der Industriekultur.

What survives is a complete steam depot rather than a hall of exhibits. The centrepiece is the 14-stall Ringlokschuppen ranged around a 20-metre turntable, with the water tower, the repair workshops and the coaling and sanding plant still in place. More than 120 rail vehicles built between 1853 and 1976 stand in the shed, in two further halls and out on the yard - steam, electric and diesel locomotives, railcars, passenger carriages and freight wagons. The museum's name changed with its 2011 refoundation: it is now the Eisenbahnmuseum Bochum, though the site is still in the Dahlhausen district and older signage and books say Bochum-Dahlhausen.

The 14-stall roundhouse and its turntable are the two subjects that define this site. From the far side of the turntable pit the radial shed fills a wide frame, and on operating days a locomotive on the table gives you movement inside that frame; the shed mouths themselves make strong individual portraits, with the darkness inside setting off the smokebox front.

Because most of the collection stands outdoors, light matters more here than in a hall museum. Early and late in the day the low sun rakes along the rows of stock; midday in high summer is the hardest light on the site. The water tower and the coaling plant are the strongest industrial-archaeology subjects after the shed.

For steam under way, the Museumstage and the Ruhrtalbahn running days are the only reliable dates - 38 2267 in steam in front of the shed is the classic Dahlhausen photograph. The museum publishes no photography rules on its visitor pages, so ask at the entrance before setting up a tripod, and treat the working areas as a live railway: staff are moving vehicles.

The turntable is the point. Very few German depots kept their radial shed, their turntable and their servicing plant together, and here the locomotives are still moved across the table on operating days - the museum's own footage of its anniversary events shows electric locomotives being turned in front of the shed.

The collection's flagship is the Prussian P 8 no. 38 2267, which works under steam on the museum's own trains. The museum also lists the tank engines 94 1692 and 95 0028 among its locomotives and the industrial engine BLE 146, while the wider collection takes in a DR Class 80 (80 030), a DB Class 66 (66 002) and the Bavarian electric E 32 27. The date range - 1853 to 1976 - means Prussian state-railway machines and Bundesbahn diesels stand within a few metres of each other.

There is also a working railway attached. The Ruhrtalbahn runs museum trains along the Ruhr from Bochum-Dahlhausen towards Witten and Wengern-Ost, hauled by the P 8 or by a V 100 (Class 212) diesel that keeps a working steam heating boiler; each locomotive takes the train roughly once a month in season. And the museum's 1936 Wismar railbus, nicknamed the "Schweineschnaeutzchen" (little pig's snout), is the vehicle normally used to shuttle visitors between the S-Bahn station and the museum gate.

This is an open-air industrial site with three roofed halls, not a climate-controlled museum, so dress for the weather and wear shoes you can walk 46,000 square metres in. The season runs from 1 March to 15 November; the museum opens Tuesday to Saturday and on every Sunday and public holiday from 10:00 to 17:00, with last admission at 16:00, and closes on Mondays unless the Monday is a holiday.

An ordinary visiting day is quiet: you walk the yard and the shed largely at your own pace, among locomotives that are being worked on rather than polished for display. The event days are a different museum - Museumstage bring locomotives into steam, and the Ruhrtalbahn running days fill the platform. Check the museum's calendar before choosing a date, because the two experiences are not interchangeable.

Two practical warnings from the museum's own pages. Card payment (EC) is accepted for admission only, so bring cash for the shop, the refreshments and the trains - the historic trains take no cashless payment at all. And the Museumspendel, the railbus shuttle from Bahnhof Dahlhausen, is currently suspended for operational reasons, so plan on the ten-minute walk from the bus stop or the walk from the S-Bahn station.