All Aboard for History, Discovery & Railway Fun!
Step into Bundaberg’s very first railway station—built back in 1881—and uncover a world of fascinating stories, machines and treasures that helped drive Queensland’s transport history. Just a short roll from its original site, the Bundaberg Railway Museum is a delight for train lovers young and old, filled with real objects, quirky artifacts and hands-on curiosities from the steam age to modern-day rail.
Kids will love exploring the original 1921 guard’s van, which once doubled as a sleeping car, and discovering the butter car insulated with actual cow hair to keep things cool without ice blocks. There’s a sense of magic in peeking into the past and seeing how everyday items were once built to solve clever problems with simple materials.
Curious minds can flip through original driver manuals, timetables and rule books, while learning how train crews communicated, navigated and kept passengers safe. They’ll also get to step inside a recovered interlocked signal cabin from Lowmead Station and see the last Centralised Traffic Control (CTC) panel ever used in Bundaberg.
Outside, families can get up close to rail parts once vital to Queensland’s cane and passenger lines — including a diamond crossing that allowed cane trams to intersect government rail tracks. Kids will be fascinated by the chunky couplings, buffers, hooks and air hoses used on older rolling stock, imagining what it might have been like to work on the tracks decades ago.
🚂 A must-stop for mini engineers, history hunters and every child who ever dreamed of being a train driver.
