Humppila to Jokioinen

In August 1971 a group of railway enthusiasts began running steam passenger trains at weekends on the Jokioinen Railway, a 750-millimetre line from Humppila through Jokioinen to Forssa. It was not yet a museum. It was the last narrow gauge in Finland still working commercially, its freight trains still carried goods to the mills of Forssa, and the volunteers' trains shared the track with them. The heritage service began before the railway it was preserving had stopped working.

Then the railway did stop. The last freight train ran in March 1974, the steam trains went with it, and an attempt to take over the whole line failed. Within two years the track to Forssa and the eight kilometres from Minkiö to Humppila had been lifted. In 1978 a new company bought the six kilometres from Jokioinen to Minkiö, and between 1992 and 1994 the section to Humppila was relaid on its old route, so that the trains meet the main line again.

Today the Jokioinen Museum Railway runs 14 kilometres of track through the farmland of south-western Häme, with three stations, seven request halts and a depot and museum at Minkiö halfway along. The trains are run by volunteers, behind steam engines built between 1901 and 1948, on Sundays in June and July and on Saturdays in August.

The museum trains leave from their own platform at Humppila, beside the VR station on the line from Turku to Toijala. Their station building came from Riippa, near Kokkola, and was moved here in 2018. The line heads south-east into open fields, with request halts at Kermala and Palomäki, where a road crosses on its way to the old iron mine at Rautavuori. Anyone waiting at a halt shows the locomotive a stop signal by hand or with a light, and the train pulls up.

Through the fields to Minkiö

At Santavaihde a turnout marks where a spur once ran to a sand pit; the spur was lifted with the rest of this section in 1975, and the halt now has a shelter and a campfire place. After Vuorela, six kilometres out, the line reaches Minkiö, eight kilometres from Humppila on the north bank of the Jänhijoki. This is the railway's headquarters. The workshops and engine sheds are here, with a heated repair hall built in 2002, the Narrow Gauge Museum and the café, and through trains wait a quarter of an hour or more before going on. The station keeps its original buildings.

The original museum line

South of Minkiö the train crosses the Jänhijoki on a steel bridge and runs on the six kilometres the museum bought in 1978. Salminen is the halt for Lake Rehtijärvi, a sandy-bottomed lake two kilometres to the east. Raemäki has three level crossings and a small wooden railway telephone box, and from Kirkkotie a road leads to Jokioinen's church of 1631. The line ends at Jokioinen, at kilometre 14.2, just north of the village and its manor. The track went on for another seven kilometres to Forssa until 1974. The whole run, with the wait at Minkiö, takes an hour or a little more, and the line's speed limit is 50 km/h.

A railway built for the mills

The Jokioinen Railway was planned by the company of Jokioinen Manor, because the Turku–Toijala line, opened in 1876, passed well to the north of the mills at Forssa. The narrow gauge opened for traffic on 9 December 1898 and ran 23 kilometres from Humppila to Forssa. Freight was always its business. From the 1930s it carried broad-gauge VR wagons on transporter wagons, which saved reloading at Humppila and kept it competitive for longer than any other narrow gauge in Finland. In the wars of 1939–45 it carried everything for the mills that made all the army's barbed wire, at Jokioinen, and all its uniform cloth, at Forssa. Passenger trains ended in August 1954.

The engines

The railway's newest steam locomotive, a Henschel of 1937, was handed to the Soviet Union in 1945 as a penalty for late war-reparation payments. Two Belgian tank engines from Tubize replaced it in 1947 and 1948. No 4 pulled the line's last freight train in 1974 and still pulls museum trains. No 5 was sold to Britain in 1972, worked on the Welshpool & Llanfair Light Railway in Wales as Orion, and came back in 2006. The rest of the steam roster came from other lines: another No 5, "Sohvi", built in Tampere for the Hyvinkää–Karkkila railway; No 6 of the Loviisa–Vesijärvi railway, the only locomotive in Finland with working acetylene lamps; and a 1901 Porter from Pittsburgh, steamed again in 2005 after 39 years. Some burn birch logs, the Tubizes burn coal, and Valmet Move 21 diesels of 1948 haul the charters and some of the heritage trains.

The museum trains run on Sundays from mid-June to late July and on Saturdays in August, with three trains each way and a break at Minkiö. No reservation is needed. The halts are request stops: to board, show the locomotive a stop signal by hand or with a light.

Times below are the Jokioinen Museum Railway's public timetable for Sundays 14 June to 26 July and Saturdays 1 to 22 August 2026, read in October 2026. Check departures at jokioistenmuseorautatie.fi (opens in a new tab).

Humppila to Jokioinen

Jokioinen to Humppila

The first train of the day starts at Minkiö and the last ends there, so a ride from Humppila to Jokioinen and back is easiest on the 10:30 or the 13:05. The Narrow Gauge Museum and the café at Minkiö are open while the trains run.

Specials

On the second Saturday of September the Starlight Train runs from early afternoon until late at night, with the trains and stations lit by lanterns; in 2026 that was 12 September, 13:20 to 22:40. At Christmas a steam train carries Santa: on Saturday 5 December 2026 between Jokioinen and Minkiö, from Jokioinen at 10:35, 12:05, 13:35 and 15:05, and on Sunday 6 December 2026 between Humppila and Minkiö, from Humppila at 10:45, 12:30 and 14:10. Dates for summer 2027 had not been published when this page was checked.

Getting to Humppila

Humppila is a station on VR's line between Turku and Tampere, with about seven trains a day in each direction. On 6 December 2026 the railway lists VR arrivals at 09:56 from Turku and 09:59 from Tampere for the 10:45 Santa train; check vr.fi (opens in a new tab) for connections on the day you travel.

Fares are set by distance, and no reservation is needed. In 2026 a return over the whole line, Humppila to Jokioinen, cost €20, and a return over half the line, from Minkiö to either end, €12; a day ticket for every train was €24. Children aged 4 to 12 pay half, and under-4s travel free. The stations at Humppila, Minkiö and Jokioinen take cards; on the train itself you pay in cash only.

The specials have fares of their own: the Starlight Train in September cost €20 for the whole day in 2026, and the December Santa train €14 return, including a warm drink and a gingerbread biscuit. Admission to the Narrow Gauge Museum at Minkiö is free.

Interrail and Eurail passes do not cover this line. Interrail's list of what the pass covers in Finland names only VR and the Helsinki commuter trains of HSL, and the Jokioinen Museum Railway is a volunteer-run heritage line outside it, so it needs a ticket of its own.

A pass can still bring you to the start. VR's trains between Turku and Tampere stop at Humppila, next to the museum railway's platform, and they are covered. For someone already travelling in Finland on a pass that makes this an easy detour; buying a pass for this line alone makes no sense, since a whole-line return costs €20.

Pass conditions checked against Interrail's railway-companies page, last updated 21 October 2026. Conditions change with each season, and the pass issuer's page is the one that binds.

The line runs through farmland, and its two ends are where the sights are: Jokioinen, a village built around a great estate, and Forssa, the mill town the railway was built to reach, seven kilometres beyond the end of the track.

Jokioinen Manor is a short walk from the terminus, and the church a kilometre from Kirkkotie halt. Forssa is a few minutes by road from Jokioinen, and its mill district, museum and duck-pond park are all in the centre.

The whole line takes an hour, and Humppila is on the railway between Turku and Tampere, so the museum trains are easy to ride as a day out from either city.

To stay nearby, there is a manor with cabins in Humppila, near the start of the line, and Forssa, beyond Jokioinen, has the hotels. The places below keep their own websites and take direct bookings.

Planning this trip and stuck on something, or spotted a time, fare or detail that has changed? Send us a message about Humppila to Jokioinen. We read every one, and we update this page when something has changed.