Museum Kingdom of Railways
During our stay in Prague we visited the Kingdom of Railways, museum devoted to railway traffic. The first thing we saw there was a huge model of the city of Prague. The idea for building this model dates back to 1975. However, five years had passed before the project was launched by the architects Vlastimil Sliva and Jirzi Straka. The model is made of plexiglass in the scale of 1:1000. Touch-screens around the model enable visitors to present individual parts of the city, roads and rivers, as well as the city areas that were flooded in 2002. The model is very realistic and presents the city in the smallest details, such as parks, bicycle lanes, etc. Additionally, exhibitions in different museum halls show the process of designing parts of this model. What we liked most was the program that uses light in order to show how the city spread and developed. It is interesting to mention that the model was built in order to help the city architects to plan further construction and development of Prague.
We also had a chance to see the magnificient model trackage. The first part of this ambitious projects was exhibited in 2009, while new parts of the trackage, which represent individual regions of the Czech Republic, are added on regular basis. After being finished, the model trackage will present the whole of the Czech Republic, with its complete railway and road networks, historical and cultural landmark, and it will take up the area of more than 1008 m2. The model is particularly interesting because it is interactive – there are interactive trains and road vehicles moving on it. Although they move at different speeds, collisions are avoided due to the chips that reduce speed when vehicles come too close to each other. Trains on this model pass through tunels and cross bridges and move across intersections. Our hosts in the museum showed us the control room, from which the whole system was operated. While we were watching the process of operating the model, we realized how complex this system was.
We recommend you to visit the Kingdom of Railways when you come to Prague. You will see how amusing and educative it is. As far as we are concerned, we are now sure that museums are not necessarily boring and that we visits some interesting museums in our country as soon as possible.
Tijana Burić 4/2-2
Elmin Ahmeti 4/2-2