Published : 2025-10-28
On 28 October 2014, China's first metro museum, the "Shanghai Metro Museum (Phase I)", was finally unveiled and officially opened for trial operation.
The newly completed Shanghai Metro Museum is located at 1779 Wuzhong Road, adjacent to Ziteng Road Station on Shanghai Metro Line 10.
The museum has a total construction area of 5,000 square metres, of which the opened area for Phase I is 2,800 square metres.
Stepping into the exhibition hall, the unique, streamlined, open-plan design highlights the speed, contemporary feel and dynamism of the metro.
From yellowed and precious historical metro documents to an original imported metro train driver's cab, from a new-concept interactive touchscreen train assembly game to a fully automatic train operation sand table that simulates real train dispatching, the Shanghai Metro Museum displays railway-related exhibits in the most fashionable and unique ways.
The Shanghai Metro Museum, with the theme of "Safe Metro, Sci-tech Metro, Green Metro, and Humanistic Metro", tracing the metro's journey, is laid out and presented in several major sections, such as the history of the metro's development, metro functions, metro culture, metro safety, and world metros.
It is striving to create a professional museum in the new era that integrates information technology, entertainment, public accessibility, and popular science.
Among the exhibits, there are items with strong historical imprints, such as the "Preliminary Plan for Shanghai's Underground Railway (Draft)", a geological model of a Shanghai Metro station, a special area paying tribute to Line 1, and a dining bowl donated by a veteran metro employee and printed with the name of the Shanghai Metro company.
There are also technological exhibits presented using the latest display technology, such as a real-time passenger flow data screen for the entire Shanghai Metro network which utilises sound, light, and colour effects, an "X-ray" perspective screen of the station's internal systems, and a virtual DIY train assembly exhibit.
Through clever design, visitors during their tour can immerse themselves in hands-on activities, and even participate in interactive games like "Fruit Ninja" to eliminate bad metro riding habits and "taking a photo" with world metros, thus learning professional metro knowledge imperceptibly.
In addition, the Shanghai Metro Museum has also introduced a small 5D cinema for the first time. During the trial operation period, it showed the film Adventure to the Future Metro.
And on top of the 3D stereoscopic effects, it adds dynamic seats, environmental effects like wind and snow, making for an immersive experience for the senses of hearing, sight, smell and touch.
