Chabówka Railway Museum – Majestic Locomotives From Times Bygone

Related post: Slovenian Railway Museum in Ljubljana.

The Chabówka Railway Museum is officially known in Polish as Skansen Taboru Kolejowego W Chabówce (The Open-air Railway Rolling Stock Museum in Chabówka).

In July 2025, my cousin invited me for my second visit to this exciting railway heritage park in Chabówka. I had previously visited the park with my cousin and his wife 14 years ago.

We started out from Kraków and the journey by car took around 1 ½ hours, the last leg being through the magnificent scenery of the Gorce Hills. It was a hot and sunny day, with the temperature reaching 35 ° Celsius. That was fine with me, but my wife decided to bow out of this excursion and stayed in our hotel in Kraków.

The associated photograph of the Gorce Hills attribution: Pudelek, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Arrival at Chabówka Railway Museum

Full of anticipation, we started our journey around this paradise for railway lovers. For most of the year, this railway museum has static exhibits of historical rolling stock. However, on special occasions, there are railway excursions that depart from the park, utilising heritage locomotives and carriages. We visited on one of the static days.

Locomotives Tp4-259 and ST-43-422. — Tp4-259 and ST-43-422

TKt locomotive at Chabówka Railway Museum. — Tp4-259 and ST-43-422

So what did we think of the Chabówka Railway Museum?

We loved it. One thing did sadden us, though. My cousin and I were shocked at the poor state of many of the locomotives and rolling stock. For example, you can compare photograph No. 1 of locomotive Tp4-259 (from the photo gallery) taken this year with the penultimate photograph from 2011 of the same locomotive. As you can see from some of the pictures in the photo gallery, much of the rolling stock is in a state of disrepair.

A word of warning for those who don’t like being outdoors on days with hot temperatures. As previously mentioned, the temperature during our visit reached 35º Celsius. The only place we found that offered us some shelter from the searing temperature was the one platform canopy in the railway heritage park, which is visible in the photo gallery above.

We loved that you could walk around the entire railway heritage park, including the locomotive shed, without any hindrance.

Holiday Time Train Chabówka to Sieniawa in 2025

As mentioned above, we visited Chabówka on a static day. Below is an excellent YouTube video dated 20 July 2025 showing an excursion from Chabówka to Sieniawa.

PKP Cargo – Owners of the Chabówka Railway Museum

I did some Googling and it turns out that PKP Cargo, which owns the railway museum, is undergoing a restructuring programme, which is due to take several years. The Polish Government have stated that PKP Cargo is too important to the Polish economy and cannot be allowed to go into liquidation. Source: Google AI overview – backed up with web links.

It seems clear to me that the Chabówka Railway Museum is on the back burner as far as investment is concerned, which presumably is why so much of the rolling stock is in such a poor state of repair.