The NTM’s railway collection began to be compiled right after the museum was founded in 1908 and has more or less increased consistently over the life of the institution. The first exhibit was in the relatively confined spaces of the Schwarzenberg Palace where large objects, let alone entire vehicles, could not be displayed. During World War II the Technical Museum was transferred to the Invalidovna building in the Karlín quarter of Prague as a provisional measure. The conditions only improved after the museum building on Letná became partially available. In 1949, the first locomotives, as well as other vehicles, were moved into the “transportation hall”.
 

The main part of the collection of railcars was amassed in the 1970s and 80s, especially in connection with the termination of steam powered operation on Czechoslovak railways in 1980. In the meantime, however, other objects have been added, including new products and their models or samples of old or damaged parts donated to the museum usually by various workshops of Czechoslovak Railways.
 

At the turn of the 1970s the activities of the NTM’s Group for the Study and Documentation of the History of the Railways were also reflected in the museum’s acquisitions: this group’s efforts led to the addition of several rare vehicles – e.g. the parlour railcars of the successor to the throne Franz Ferdinand of Austria and of Baron Rothschild. The group was also responsible for the launch into operation of the steam locomotive 387.043, which became the first-ever operating museum locomotive in the then Czechoslovakia.
 

The museum has always had limited conditions for storing the vehicles. In 1971, a three-track hall was built in Čelákovice and very quickly filled up with the NTM’s vehicles. Following 1990, the NTM therefore began to provide the long-term loans of vehicles and other collection objects to operators both from the side of the former Czechoslovak (later Czech) Railways, as well as of some private entities.
 

At the end of 2000, a government resolution resulted in the creation of the NTM’s Railway Museum with part of the collections being transferred to it from the transportation history department. Its objective is to create its own exhibit of the history of railway transportation and of related fields in the spaces of the former depot at Masaryk Station in Prague. Since 2006 the former locomotive depot in Chomutov has served as depository spaces.