Rail Tourism – Emergencies and Possibilities on National Territory

Abstract

The theme related to rail tourism has been gaining prominence, related to sustainability, and our goal is to explore how the use of railway structures for tourism, namely stations, is currently seen by communities. In an attempt to better understand these relationships between the old infrastructures and the community where they are located, we take a look at the stations that have been transformed into railway museum nuclei that depend on the Museu Nacional Ferroviário. We present an embryonic approach embodied in an exploratory study that includes a brief survey of cases of sustainable use of the railroad heritage, the use of bibliography to sustain the investigation, and the execution of a semi-structured interview as a research method.

The interview serves the purposes of this approach, which we have established to be exploratory. We interviewed the people in charge of four museum nuclei out of a total of five in operation and dependent on the Museu Nacional Ferroviário. These interviews were conducted throughout the months of July and August 2022. The study points to different degrees of relationship that these museums establish with the community, involving it in their activities, which can be a reason for attracting tourists.

The theme of sustainability in tourism is addressed from the point of view of the relationships it establishes with the community in the specific case of this kind of railroad tourism, involving the built heritage in the dynamization of small museum spaces.