The Basque Railway Museum at Azpeitia, 2025

James Waite reported on this museum in 2018, now Clive Hepworth updates that and provides some extra pictures from his June 2025 visit.

I visited this site on 21st June 2025. The information below represents an update on James Waite's 2018 visit which has extra basic information which has not been repeated here. This is an excellent, informative and well organised site operating under the inspirational Museum Director, Juanjo Olaizola who is ably assisted by his wife. The museum has its own very good website (https://museoa.euskotren.eus) with all the necessary details in terms of access, opening hours, timetables etc. The entrance fee of 3 Euros to visit the site or 6 Euros to include a train ride represents astonishingly good value.

The metre gauge locomotives are all as described in the 2018 report. The operating locomotive on my visit was FV 2-6-0T 104 "Aurrera" (Nasmyth Wilson 551/1898), one of 5 potentially operational metre gauge locomotives on the site. The normal Saturday departures of 12.00 and 17.30 were augmented by an extra 10.30 departure for a German tourist group.

"Zorroza" a Nasmyth Wilson 2-4-0T (433/1892) and "Echeverria" a Henschel 0-4-0T (25174/1952) were both located on one of the turntable roads.

The broad gauge bay platform contained the Grafton steam crane plus "Maite", an Andrew Barclay 0-6-0ST (1874/1925) built for the Anglo-Spanish Construction Company and 1, a Maffei Munich 0-4-0WT (4195/1925) that worked as the Babcock & Wilcox works shunter until 1975.

The extensive museum site includes a huge range of diesel and electric locomotives, coaches, wagons and related railway equipment, all with multilingual information boards.

In addition, the museum is home to buses, trams, an ex-London/Donostia trolley bus, emergency service vehicles and cars. In between driving the steam locomotive (fired by his wife), Juanjo gave an enthusiastic talk and operated the ex-Zaragoza tram on 100m of demonstration track while 104 was taking an early afternoon siesta on the running shed.

This is an outstanding museum that really celebrates Basque railway and transport heritage. The whole site is accessible to visitors with the exception of the running shed and attached workshop for which prior notice is required. There is also an excellent riverside cafe/bar/tapas place just 100m across the bridge opposite the station building.

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This is "Aurrera" at work.

It was the only locomotive in steam on the occasion of the visit.

The grey locomotive is FV 2-6+4 Engerth 56 "Urko" (Krauss Munich 7630/1920) although it has been restored as 50 "Euskadi".

This is the only other metre gauge locomotive shown in this report, being Amorebieta and Guernica Railway 0-6-0T 1 (Sharp Stewart 3435/1888).

		This is a Babcock and Wilcox built copy of a Maffei 0-4-0T (the latter's 4195/1925). It looks like a stretched (sideways) version of their locomotives which worked in some of Java's sugar mills.
		This is 'Maite', the Andrew Barclay 0-6-0T.
		2-4-0T 8, 'Zorroza', came from Nasmyth Wilson (433/1892)
		'Echeverria', is a Henschel 0-4-0T (25174/1952) which is the youngest steam locomotive in the museum.