Its working model railway depicting the stretch of rail between Bathurst station and Tarana is a delight for all ages.

I took a close-up photo of the model of the Bathurst rail station building and later, a photo of the real thing. Side by side, it's hard at first glance to distinguish them.

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The countryside that you stare at from the window of the train is lovingly depicted in miniature, conjuring times past as well as the present.

There are tiny kelpies rounding up tiny sheep, the trampled earth at the gates near the shearing shed, even little outdoor dunnies.

The museum's interpretive signage and sturdy historical objects - leather document holders, lamps, tools - complete the sense of Bathurst as a bustling, steaming, whistling, hammering, coal-shovelling railway town.

While for many decades the story is one of expansion, by the 1980s it's a story of decline as train stations are closed and the workforce begins to shrink.

There is hope, though, in knowing that relentless local campaigning managed to reinstate train services to Sydney in the form of the Bathurst Bullet.

There's also another symbol of hope in the electric car charging station out the front of the new museum.

In re-invigorated train travel and electric cars we have robust environmental alternatives to private petrol-powered motor cars.

According to the state government, greenhouse gas emissions per passenger kilometre for rail transport is up to five times less than that of car transport.

And electric cars are just as happy to slurp on energy from renewables as they are from coal-fired power stations.

What we need to move it all along is the sort of policy and infrastructure initiatives shown from governments across the land when the railways were first built.

Today, we need even better public transport - what about free wi-fi and recharging stations on commuter trains, such as they have in other parts of the world? - and a rapid transition to electric cars to carry us forward.

Sadly, public transport is still seen as a second-class travel option, and the electric revolution is very slow to start in Australia.

Still, it was great to see a Kona electric vehicle having a long drink at the charging station outside the Bathurst Rail Museum the other day.