Arganzuela and the Delicias: the railway-museum quarter
A grand iron train shed turned museum, the working-industrial streets, and the river edge below. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Estación de Delicias / Museo del Ferrocarril
Madrid's first grand terminus, opened in 1880, a great glazed iron-and-glass shed engineered in the workshops that built Paris stations. Trains stopped running in 1969; now it's the railway museum, the platforms full of restored steam locomotives under the original canopy. Go for the shed itself — the engineering is the exhibit.

2. The locomotive hall under the canopy
Inside, the 19th-century roof span is the real marvel: wrought-iron arches holding a ceiling of glass over rows of black engines. There's a weekend market under it some weekends and a café in an old carriage. You don't have to be a train person; the volume of light and iron does the work.

3. Paseo de las Delicias
The long avenue that gave the station its name, lined with the warehouses and workshops of the quarter that grew up around the railway. Working Madrid, not pretty Madrid — auto shops, wholesalers, the odd old factory frontage. Walk it for the texture of a district that has always made and moved things.

4. Matadero Madrid
The former municipal slaughterhouse, a sprawl of early-1900s brick pavilions now turned into one of the city's best cultural centres — galleries, a cinema, design studios, a reading room. Wander the courtyards even if nothing's on; the conversion kept the industrial bones honest. A long block west toward the river.

5. Madrid Río at the Arganzuela edge
Where the quarter meets the Manzanares, now a long riverside park laid over a buried motorway. Cross one of the new footbridges and look back at Matadero's brick against the water. The river edge is where industrial Arganzuela finally exhales — joggers, dogs, kids on the slides.

6. Méndez Álvaro
Loop back east through the warehouse streets toward the transport hub at *Méndez Álvaro* — the bus station, the office towers, the metro. An unromantic end that fits the walk: this is the part of Madrid that keeps the rest of it supplied. Trains and metro home from here.

Arganzuela and the Delicias: the railway-museum quarter