The building is not to be confused with the station opened in 1996 by Cercanías Madrid called Delicias. The station was opened in March 1880 by King Alfonso XII and Queen Maria Cristina. It was commissioned by a short-lived railway company, the Compañía de los Caminos de Hierro de Ciudad Real a Badajoz, which had recently opened a line from Ciudad Real to the capital. One reason for the choice of Delicias as the site of the terminus was the proximity of an existing line, the Ferrocarril de contorno de Madrid, which served industrial areas of Madrid. In the year the station was opened, the railway company was absorbed by a larger rival, Compañía de los Ferrocarriles de Madrid a Zaragoza y Alicante. MZA had the use of Atocha station, and did not need Delicias station, which it transferred to a third company, the Compañía de los Ferrocarriles de Madrid a Cáceres y Portugal. An international service to Portugal was developed, but the station never achieved a high volume of passengers, and it closed to passenger traffic in 1969.
Architecture
As a terminus, the station had separate facilities for arriving and departing passengers. However, the most impressive feature is the iron-framed train shed covered by a single-span roof. The building was designed by a French engineer, Émile Cachelièvre. It has been suggested that he was influenced by Henri de Dion's Galerie des Machines, one of the metal-framed buildings erected for the Exposition Universelle in Paris. The Franco-Belgian Fives group provided metal for both projects.
Collections
Rolling stock
The train shed of the former station now houses historic rolling stock.
Steam
Steam was used on the Spanish railways in the period 1848–1975, although the earliest locomotive in the museum dates from the 1860s.
The museum has preserved part of a hydraulic system, developed by the Italian firm Bianchi and Servettaz, which was used to control points switching and signalling at Algodor.
Train service
The museum runs a heritage train service to Aranjuez. Known as the "strawberry train", it uses vintage rolling stock.
The station has been used as a location in numerous films and television series. Several films set in Russia, but shot mostly in Spain, used the station as location: Dr Zhivago by David Lean, Nicholas and Alexandra by Franklin J. Schaffner and Reds by Warren Beatty. Other films filmed there include The Violet Seller by Luis César Amadori, Travels with My Aunt by George Cukor, March or Die by Dick Richards and Lovers by Vicente Aranda. Television series include Televisión Española's Cuéntame cómo pasó, Netflix's Cable Girls and Antena 3's The Time in Between and Velvet.
