For anyone who finds the glass compartments and 'do not touch' signs of conventional museums tedious, the hands-on, outdoor Hong Kong Railway Museum at Tai Po Market is a unique alternative.
The museum may not be the biggest in Hong Kong, but it does an excellent job of showcasing a moment in colonial history - preserving the original 1913 Kowloon-Canton Railway station building, six train compartments from varying 20th century decades, and two locomotives on tracks - one steam, one diesel.
Covering an area of 6,500 square metres, the museum's most interesting exhibit is probably a narrow-gauge steam locomotive that once ran on the Sha Tau Kok Railway Line between Fanling and Sha Tau Kok, a service that went out of operation in 1928. The diesel locomotive dates back to 1955, and is nicknamed 'Sir Alexander' after the Hong Kong governor Alexander Grantham.
The oldest of the compartments on display is the third-class No 302, which was brought into service in 1911, just a year after the original Kowloon-Canton Railway was inaugurated.
Visitors can take a seat in the carriage and imagine themselves lurching through the deserted turn-of-last-century New Territories to the occasional blast of a steam whistle.
The station building itself is architecturally a departure from the other stations that lined the railway, and features a Chinese-style pitched roof and motifs, such as red bats, peonies and magpies, in the style of a traditional Chinese temple.