Railway Museum

You get in through an automatic ticket gate, exactly like a station, which is the first joke and sets the tone. The Railway Museum opened in Omiya in 2007 on JR East's own historical collection and doubled in size with a new wing in 2018. The centrepiece is the Rolling Stock Station, a hall holding 36 real vehicles arranged around a turntable: a Meiji-era steam locomotive, prewar electric cars, a sleeper carriage, imperial saloon cars behind glass, and a 0-series Shinkansen nose that still looks like the future it was sold as. Several times a day they rotate the C57 on the turntable and blow the whistle, which is loud in an enclosed hall and worth being present for. Upstairs is the engineering: signalling, brakes, why a flanged wheel stays on a rail, and a very large model diorama with scheduled shows. There are driving simulators, including a D51 steam simulator that requires you to shovel, and an E5 Shinkansen one that runs by lottery. Outside, a small train circuit lets children actually drive for a few hundred yen. It is designed for children and it is thorough enough for adults who like machines. English signage exists but the deeper labels are Japanese only. Tickets are around 1,600 yen and are sold in advance online and at convenience stores, and from machines at the museum on the day unless it has reached capacity. Weekends and school holidays are busy and the simulator lotteries fill within the first hour. From Omiya, take the New Shuttle one stop to Tetsudo-Hakubutsukan.