Welcome to the first miniature city in India. To visit this city, you will need to go to Joshi's Museum of Miniature Railways. The museum was the brainchild of the late Mr. B. S. Joshi, popularly known as Bhau Joshi. The museum owes its existence to Bhau Joshi's childhood passion of collecting train models. As a child, he spent hours working on layouts of various kinds. It could be a fortress of Shivaji, a layout of a circus camp, a scene on an express highway with moving cars, or even a depiction of a fire engine putting out a fire. An amazing aspect of these layouts was that none of them seemed to resemble some amateurish work undertaken by a child to while away his time. It was painstaking effort, with every minute detail such as proportion and symmetry taken into account. Soon Bhau Joshi's 'layouts' were the talk of the neighbourhood with people queuing up to have a look at his awesome models.

Around the 1980s he started work on a dream layout, a sort of a culmination of a 40-year obsession. He decided to create a permanent museum of miniature Railways. In fact, Mr. Joshi, owner of Soudamini Instruments, a factory dealing in electro magnetic relays, was in no way connected with the railways. Train models were just a hobby with him.

In 1991,a special hall was constructed on the first floor of his factory. It was here that the awesome 'layout' was set up. The 'layout' has nearly 1000 wires coming out of the control panel. Also depicted in the 'layout' are 65 signals, fences, lampposts, flyovers, etc, all manufactured by hand, using chemical etching techniques. The control panel has been so designed that the entire layout can be operated manually or computer controlled.
At the museum, you will see a fully functional station yard with 6 platforms, announcement systems, 3 main lines, goods loading facility. Also on view are a two-lane highway with moving cars, a Drive-in theater, a Highway cafeteria, a circus show, a swimming pool with people enjoying a swim, windmills, tunnels, mountains, ghat section, mountaineers and many more such depictions!

The museum exists purely due to the single-minded devotion and hard work of the now-deceased Bhau Joshi. According to him, architecture, engineering, physics, chemistry, mathematics, statistics, and even accounting and photography are linked to this hobby. It was Bhau Joshi's fervent wish that the coming generation would cultivate this hobby since it would help them develop a multidisciplinary personality and help them in the real world.

Timings: Saturdays and Sundays, 5 pm –8.00 pm. Batches every half an hour.

Address: Joshi's Museum of Miniature Railways, next to Sangam Press, Soudamini Instruments, 17/1 B/2, G. A. Kulkarni Road, off Karve Road, Kothrud, Pune 411 029; Phone: 543 5378; Fax: 543 1165; email: ravi_jo@geocities.com

Shabari Shetty