June 19th, 2018 by Pete Silvester
Its not a thrilling sight, but Bang Sue junction is about to become rather important place for Thai rail travel, and its an interesting case study on how Thai’s like to build things.
Bang Sue Junction:
From here, the rail line splits off West toward the South. It also connects to the Bangkok underground MRT line, and serves many city bus lines.
They’re currently building a large 5-level Bang Sue Central Station. It will have twenty-four 600-meter long platforms, and will eventually replace Hua Lumphong as the terminal station for all State Railway lines, moving train travel out of the inner city entirely
:'( We love Hua Lumphong. It will be sorely missed.
The Library Train:
You might see a well-decorated train carriage on the side of the tracks. Its actually a library for homeless children. The project was initiated in 1999 by the Royal Thai Police to offer basic education services to homeless children living in the Bang Sue area. There’s another one down in Hua Lumphong.
:’) Gosh we love the State Railways of Thailand!
A cement city:
You might be able to see the headquarters of Siam Cement Group (SCG) – the largest cement company in Southeast Asia, and the 4th largest company in Thailand. The Thai construction industry seems to absolutely love cement. A humble metro station looks like an aircraft carrier. Look how much of it is around Bang Sue Junction!
Interestingly, Siam Cement was founded by a royal decree, and is still 30% owned and controlled by the Crown.
TIPS:
Coming into Bangkok?: If you’re arriving into Bangkok from further afield, this might be the stop to get off thanks to its links to the MRT, and its proximity to the BTS – the two metro lines in Bangkok. Otherwise, the terminal station is also on the MRT, and its a nice place, so you should go check it out.
June 19th, 2018 by Pete Silvester
Bangkok is a not-so-ancient seat of the Thai Royal court, and you may be passing a surprising and important palace.
Wang Dusit:
The “Celestial Dwelling” forms the main administrative centre of the Thai kingdom. Established by King Chulalongkorn, Dusit Palace was once outside of town and offered space, eventually becoming the primary residence of the kings. Unfortunately, its not visible from the train. But you may be able to see its moat and some of the King’s Royal Guards guarding it.
Chitralada Palace was a residence of the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama the 9th) – a man with a keen interest in agriculture. He turned the palace grounds is also an operational farm, and its still possible to purchase products under the Chitralada Projects brand. We recommend the famous milk candies, and its honey, which you may be able to find in convenience stores, or at the airport.
June 19th, 2018 by Pete Silvester
On your way through Bangkok, you might be thinking its a rather messy city, with tangles of cables, tight squeezes, and dirty canals. But there’s more than meets the eye.
The tangles of cables:
Microsoft founder Bill Gates once got on social media to say that they were a sign of “energy poverty”, and evidence of people stealing electricity from the grid. But thats not true. Rather private utilities companies hire the poles from the metropolitan or provincial electricity authorities, and their competing interests mean that they tend not to coordinate and share cables like in other countries.
It may look dangerous, but most are just telephone and internet wires with very low voltages. The higher voltage wires are placed higher up, in relative safety. They can become dangerous when vehicles collide with them, and the weight of all the cables can drag down multiple poles.
Most Thai people are willing to shrug it off the unsightly appearance as a necessary price for modern amenities.
The tight squeezes:
One of the few points for which the Thai rail system is famous is the precious little space left between the passing trains and the structures on either side. Space is short in Bangkok. The railway tracks are built on public land, so its up to the Thai authorities to tell people to vacate it. But I guess they don’t have the heart to do so, and the only convincing argument is made by a moving train.
In Maeklong – a town to the southwest of Bangkok – locals have a regular wet market where fresh fruit and vegetables are actually laid over the train tracks. When the train’s horn blows, awnings are withdrawn, produce is shifted, people disperse, before a slow-moving train pushes through a still space that was a briefly before a heaving mass of activity.
The stinky canals:
Bangkok was once referred to as “the Venice of the East” due to its sprawling network of “Klong”. They still serve a vital function for Bangkok for sewage disposal, transport, and flood mitigation.
The Klong Saen Saep, which we cross just outside of Hua Lumphong Station, was built by King Rama the 3rd in 1837 to transport soldiers during a conflict between Siam and Annam over Cambodia. It connects the Chao Phraya river to the Prachin Buri and Chachaoengsao rivers. The portion of the canal you should be able to see has an express boat service that cuts through and churns rather dodgy smelling water today, but its interesting to note that it was once so abundant with lotus flowers that King Mongkut built the Lotus Pond Palace on its banks.
TIPS:
Take a real klong ferry in Bangkok: No trip to Bangkok is complete without a canal boat ride. But avoid those people offering to take you to a water market – you will see no such thing. Rather, do as the locals do and take a canal ferry ride! It will cost you less than a dollar, and you will see just as much of Bangkok, as well as a more authentic slice of modern Bangkok life.
Don’t put your hand out the window: In the train stations, you might like to keep an eye out for the rather gruesome painted scenes of what happens to people who do.
June 19th, 2018 by Pete Silvester
Hua Lumphong Station is, for the time being, the beginning or end of most great Thai rail journeys. We love it!
The Thai railway network was inaugurated here in 1897, and the building you see was erected in 1916. Like many significant Thai buildings with Royal patronage, the architecture is Italian, and of a neo-renaissance style – with a typically lofty and triumphant hall, and great natural light thanks to use of glass that was, at the times, considered state-of-the-art and adventurous.
A portrait of the founder of Thailand’s railway system greets you as you pass through to the train platforms. As an infant in 1855, King Chulalongkorn was presented with a model train set from an envoy of Queen Victoria who was trying to convince his father – King Mongkut – to link her colonies in British India and Malaya by rail. Mongkut declined to do as Victoria wished, but after assuming the throne 13 years later, Chulalongkorn began surveying a rail link in 1888 – not to Britain’s bordering colonies, but instead north to Siam’s second city of Chiangmai.
Hua Lumphong serves over 60,000 passengers daily. It is a terminus for every line in State Railway of Thailand network, taking you north to Chiangmai, Northeast to Laos, East to Cambodia, West toward Myanmar, and South to Malaysia. It is also, usually, the terminus of the Eastern and Oriental Express luxury train that connects all the way down to Singapore.
A not so pleasant story about this departures hall: At 8.55am on 8 November 1986, a newly repaired locamotive was heading here from Bang Sue station, towing 6 carriages, travelling at around 50km per hour. But there was nobody on it! The train careened into the barriers at the railhead and was flung upwards onto the elevated platform, skidding onto its side across the terminal floor. It grinded to a halt a few metres short of the station entrance. A book stall, information booth, soft drink stand, and foreign exchange counter were all smashed. Fortunately, the station master had been notified of the coming disaster as the train began its 8km dash from the North, and was able to evacuate the area in the few minutes he had to respond. However, the airborne train knocked over two giant timetable boards which caused 4 fatalities.
SOME TIPS:
Buying tickets in advance: Trains can get sold out well in advance. If you’re still in the planning stages, we recommend using 12Go.asia and book early. They have a great website for train tickets, but can also connect buses, ferries, and flights if you need. You can pick up tickets in their office across the road from Hua Lumphong to the south when you exit through the main hall, but be sure to check their opening times. You’ll see a building labelled D.O.B – it also has a cafe with great juices! You can book your ticket with them in the little booking window below.
Public Transport Connections: The station is connected to Bangkok’s underground train – The MRT – which then connects to the the overground BTS Skytrain lines, and the Airport link to Suvarnabumi Airport.
Thonburi / Bangkok Noi departures: Some train journeys to the West and South depart instead from Thonburi Station, which is across the river to the West from here. If you are heading that way, be sure to check your tickets for the departure station listed. It can be tricky to get there, so if you need to get to Thonburi, leave plenty of time to either take a taxi, or inquire about how to get there by train.
Children: under 100cm and younger than 3 years travel free, provided they can share a seat with you if it comes to it.
Ladies: Some trains have special carriages for ladies and their accompanying children. Keep a look out for the pink signs on the side of carriages if you’re interested.
Dogs: You can bring dogs and cats on 3rd class carriages if they have a cage or case. They may charge between 90 and 150 baht per animal.
Old rolling stock: There are a few interesting pieces of old rolling stock around Hua Lumphong. Go exploring and you might find a 1935 Hitachi engine, another engine that has been converted into a mini shrine for railway workers, and a curious military carriage with cannons poking out of it.
Railway Museum: If you exit to the south of the main hall, you’ll find a small railway museum to the right (attached to the southwestern corner of the building). Not a bad place to visit if you have some time to burn, but keep expectations low).
Hungry?: There are some cheap and clean eats in and around the station, but you’re in a bit of a culinary dead-zone by Bangkok standards. There’s always the food court on the eastern flank of the main hall, which looks dodgey and has a strange coupon-based payment system, but has okay Thai fair.
Thirsty?: I don’t mind the coffee at Black Canyon upstairs inside the main station. If you have time, there are some hipster-styled cafes or bars if you head to Chinatown (to the west of the station, over the canal and into the alleys). I like 2W for a good coffee, and the oddly named “Teens of Thailand” for a fancy G&T at night.
June 17th, 2018 by Pete Silvester
This final Blip on the Death Railway is a sobering reminder of what the laborers endured during the construction of the Death Railway.
AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT MUSEUM
The Australian government maintains this museum and grounds along the Hellfire Pass. It was established in 1998 with the cooperation of the Thai government. If you haven’t had your fill of listening to Australians yet, they provide more audio recordings to listen to as you walk the trail, in which the survivors of the Death Railway describe their hardships and share their personal experiences of working through this section of the mountain.
A memorial built to remember these men is located just a short walk from the bottom of the stairs, but the entire walking trail through the Hellfire Pass goes on for roughly 4 km, and we recommend only the reasonably fit attempt the descent to the memorial and return climb, but its well worth it if you do.
HELLFIRE PASS
The particular spot of the memorial is the Konyu cutting, deemed the Hellfire Pass by those who worked here around the clock for 12 weeks, illuminated by small fires throughout the night. It was likely the most physically demanding part of the railway, the sheer rock was cut away by hand without the assistance of heavy machinery.
The first step in excavating a cutting was to clear the area of vegetation. Then loose soil could be cleared relatively quickly using hand tools. Where the ground was semi-marbleized limestone (as at Hellfire Pass) however, the clearing work was more time consuming and difficult. A common method of drilling the rock was ‘hammer and tap’. One man would hold a drill—the ‘tap’—while another drove it into the rock by wielding a hammer (of 8 to 10 lb). After each blow from the hammer man, the tap man would rotate the drill to prevent it from becoming stuck in the rock. Three progressively longer lengths of tap were used as the prisoners drilled deeper into the rock. The rock powder was then extracted by pouring water into the hole and scooping out the resulting mud with a long spoon.
Dynamite would be placed after a series of holes were finished. Hugh Clarke, an Australian prisoner of war, recalled: “The engineers would plug it with dynamite, get six or seven of us out and give us a cigarette. We would light a cigarette each. We would have to light four or five fuses and then go for our lives up into the bush before the charges blew.” After the dust had settled, the hammer-and-tap pair would move to another section while other gangs of prisoners moved the rubble. After breaking it up with shovels and picks, they would carry it out using sacks or bamboo baskets. Where a cutting was deep, human chains would be formed to carry earth up ladders and over the side of the cutting. In some cases, skips on light rail were used to move the earth.
Work on cuttings was exhausting and dangerous. It was easy for a hammer man, tired and malnourished, to slip and hit his partner holding the tap, crushing his fingers. Rock splinters from the drilling and the explosives could easily cause skin and eye injuries. Sharp rubble was also a hazard to men whose shoes and clothes had long since worn away in the humid climate. Any injury incurred in the construction of a cutting was compounded by the lack of medicine available to doctors and the poor food provided to prisoners. Even a small cut from sharp rock could become infected and turn into a tropical ulcer. The Japanese engineers set daily quotas for each prisoner. For a hammer and tap pair, the initial quota was one metre of drilling per day. However, the Japanese quickly increased this, so that during the ‘Speedo’ period in mid-1943 each team was drilling at least three metres. To complete this, men were made to work for up to fifteen, even eighteen, hours a day.
Compared with the Bridge over the River Kwai, and the Wang Po viaduct, you can understand why the Australian government decided to erect a memorial here. As opposed to bridges, viaducts and tracks, this pass will remain for millennia as a testament to the extreme effort and futility of the whole godforsaken undertaking. It sits out of place amidst bamboo and green hilly countryside. Yet, its hauntingly beautiful, and quiet. A perfect to remember, contemplate, and forgive.
WEARY DUNLOP PEACE PARK
The Weary Dunlop Park – on the way to Hellfire Pass – is a tribute to the Australian POW surgeon Lieutenant-Colonel E.E. ‘Weary’ Dunlop. It is found at Home Phu Toey resort, on the Kwae Noi a short distance downstream from the former site of Konyu River camp and accessible from Highway 323 just south of the entrance to Hellfire Pass Memorial Museum.
Dunlop is revered in Australia as the iconic image of the self-sacrifice, courage and compassion manifested by Australian doctors in captivity, but what makes the park unusual is that it is located in Thailand and was created by a Thai.
The owner of the Home Phu Toey resort, a Thai businessman Mr Kanit Wanachote, met Dunlop in 1985 when he and his ex-POW companions Bill Haskell and Keith Flanagan were travelling up the Kwae Noi searching for the sites of the former Konyu River and Hintok River camps. Calling in at what they thought was a restaurant, they found Kanit and his wife living on a moored houseboat while they were building their home on land at Phu Toey. Kanit’s offer of hospitality and a beer started a life-long friendship with Dunlop, Haskell and Flanagan, each of whom returned to Home Phu Toey regularly until their deaths.
When Dunlop died in 1993 some of his ashes were taken to the railway. One part was interred in Hellfire Pass near the plaque that Dunlop had unveiled some years earlier. Another part was floated down the Kwae Noi from the ‘Green Beach’ at Home Phu Toey Resort. In 2009 Mr Kanit Wanachote was award an Honorary Order of Australia medal in recognition of his ‘service to Australia through his memorial peace park and museum erected to preserve the memory of the Burma–Thailand Railway Prisoners of War’.
June 17th, 2018 by Pete Silvester
Nam Tok is where the train stops to go back to Bangkok. If you’re looking to explore Hellfire Pass, jump off here, and keep going another 22 kilometres upriver. The main road should be downhill only a hundred metres or so, and turning right there on route 323 will get you there. We’ve left a Blip there for you.
Up and over the hill is Erawan National Park, and across the river is Sai Yok National Park. Both are vast natural areas with some of the most abundant floura and fauna you’re likely to find in Thailand.
If you haven’t pre-arranged transport, you should find taxi drivers or tour operators not too hard to find on most days, either at the station, or down on the main road.
If it has rained recently, you might want to check out the Sai Yok Nai Waterfall, which is about a kilometre further up the old track. You may need to go downhill to the main road and head to the right.
June 17th, 2018 by Pete Silvester
As you start nearing the end of the Death Railway, we should wrap up the story and say our goodbyes.
At the end of the war, the railway belonged to the British. The British pulled up 3.9km of track on the Thai-Burma border, and they deemed most of it unfit for peacetime commercial traffic due to its supposedly poor construction.
The line was actually sold to the Thai Railways and the entire stretch of iron that you have been rolling on was pulled up, and new rail lines were relaid over the old. Because there were no plans to rebuild a bridge crossing a major river at Moulmein in Burma, the Thai Railways felt that re-laying the rails further than Nam Tok onwards to Burma was not a wise investment.
However, new plans are currently underway to build a transport corridor a shorter distance directly West of here to the new deepwater port on the Indian Ocean at Dawei. Just as the Japanese thought during the war, the Thai and Burmese economic policymakers believe that this route will reduce the dependence on the Straights of Malacca and Singapore for getting goods to and from the Indian Ocean.
After the war, Colonel Phillip Hoosey returned to England to a family that didn’t know him. He returned to his job as a banker under the same supervisor that convinced him to enlist in the first place, himself a Brigadeer. Noticing his emotional trauma upon his return home, the supervisor sent him for a 6 month stint to its branches in tropical South America, hoping it would help the transition home to be less jarring. Three years after the war, Hoosey searched for Mr. Boon Pong of Bangkok, who had saved so many lives by smuggling medicines and money to the hospital, but was never able to locate him.
Pierre Boulle – author of The Bridge on the River Kwai – returned to Paris, where he wrote another book. Le Planet des Sange, or The Planet of the Apes.
We hope you’ve enjoyed your journey on the Death Railway with us. It is the first of hopefully many trips that will be available through our app, not only those in Thailand and Asia, but for all your journeys throughout the world. Because there are fascinating stories hidden everywhere, and we’d like to help you to find them. If you like what we’re doing, please let us know by rating our app, but also by connecting with us through WindowSeater.com. We’re really depending on your support for turning WindowSeater into a global project for all railways – not just the exceedingly remarkable ones like this one.
June 17th, 2018 by Pete Silvester
Embankments were the most common type of engineering task along the railway. They could range from small earthworks levelling out undulating terrain to massive artificial hills rising out of the jungle. These structures were necessary to maintain a gentle gradient along the railway, as steam trains could only climb or descend gentle slopes. Embankments were used where the level of the ground had to be raised to accommodate the railway but bridges were impractical or unnecessary.
As with all work on the railway, the first step in the construction of an embankment was to clear the jungle along the path the railway was to take. The width of the land cleared depended on the size of the embankment to be constructed. The larger the embankment, the wider its base would be. One embankment, around two kilometres from Hellfire Pass, was seven metres tall and thus required a huge base to be cleared.
To speed progress on the railway, Japanese surveyors erected timber guide frames along the route of each embankment. The guards could then direct construction without engineers or surveyors, freeing these men for more complex tasks.
The embankments themselves were constructed from rock and soil. As with the construction of bridges, the Japanese used local materials in the embankments. In some places, the excavation of cuttings provided material for the construction of nearby embankments.
However, in other places rock and soil had to be laboriously carried to the construction site by prisoners and rōmusha. In these cases, one group of labourers would be engaged in digging using basic hand tools such as shovels, picks and hoes (chunkels). These tools were basic, poor in quality and often broke.
Another group of labourers would carry the material to the site of the embankment. These men would use baskets or a sack spread between two bamboo poles, called a tanka. The journey from the quarry to the embankment differed from site to site, but could be extremely arduous, especially as the embankment grew in height.
During the wet season, the steep sides of the embankments became slippery and unstable making the trek to the top gruelling for the tired labourers. Once at the top they had to stamp the earth down and return for another trip.
Initially, the daily quota for each man working on embankments was to move one cubic metre of earth. As pressure increased to complete the railway, so too did the daily quota. Eventually the quota reached three cubic metres a day, which would have been a challenging task even for fit men.
It is a tribute to their construction that many embankments remain relatively intact along the Thai–Burma railway today. Unlike wooden bridges, many of which collapsed or rotted away after the railway fell into disuse after the war, embankments even when hidden now form part of the physical and cultural landscape.
June 17th, 2018 by Pete Silvester
The Wampo Viaduct straddles a particularly difficult part of the route. It is around 200m long, and sits up to 9 metres high. Although it has been repaired and maintained by the State Railways of Thailand, this is actually the original structure that was built by the POWs, Southeast Asian labourers, and Japanese soldiers. It is the only remaining wooden bridge on the route. Remarkably, this huge structure was built in just 17 days. Be sure to soak in the riverside view of the train, and then look down to see the huge sleepers and foundations which, although looking a bit old, seem to have stood the test of time.
Wooden ‘trestle’ bridges like this on were composed of a number of short spans supported by a frame, which was termed the trestle. These were particularly suited to the Thai–Burma railway as they were simple to construct. Nevertheless, the terrain, the lack of resources and the speed at which the railway was built meant that bridge construction was often a precarious and dangerous task. One bridge, about 3.5 kilometres along the track from Hellfire Pass (Konyu Cutting), fell down three times during construction, prompting Australian prisoners to call it ‘Pack of Cards Bridge’.
Bridge construction used local wood, which was vital given the difficulty in transporting materials to construction sites. Ideally, the wood used for bridge construction was teak, as it rotted more slowly compared to other softer woods. However, this was not always possible and parts of bridges were often built with softer, less durable wood.
Prisoners formed work gangs in the jungle cutting down wood and hauling it to worksites. Another group of prisoners would cut this wood into standard sizes. This was dangerous work, and a number of prisoners were killed or injured by falling trees, logs rolling down the hills or by splinters.
Once wood had been readied, the bridge was put together by yet another group of prisoners under the direction of Japanese engineers. Their first task was to lay the foundations. Where the ground was stable, these footings were constructed out of concrete into which the bridge trestles were inserted. Many of these footings can still be seen along the railway.
In places where the soil was soft the bridge foundations were constructed using pile driving. Long timber piles were driven into the ground using a heavy weight suspended by a rope from a timber scaffold. A team of prisoners below pulled the weight up to the desired height, after which it was dropped onto the pile. The weight would then be lifted up again and the process continued until the pile was driven far enough into the ground.
The whole scaffold would then be moved to the next pile in the bridge. Prisoners could spend their whole day lifting the weight, often while standing in the river the bridge was intended to cross.
Once the bridge foundations were laid, the pre-cut timber pieces were assembled at the site. Bamboo scaffolding was created and the heavy beams lifted up using ropes and pulleys. As with many tasks on the railway, muscle power was central to this process.
Work on bridges was dangerous. Workers ran the risk of falling off the tall structures, especially when carrying heavy loads or when the timber was wet and slippery.
Reportedly prisoners attempted to sabotage the bridges they were building, placing termite nests on the bridge timbers, or substituting poor quality wood which would make the bridge unstable.
Almost all the wooden bridges on the railway have disappeared, the notable exception being the Wampo viaduct.
If you’re on the rocky side of the train, you may briefly see a large cave open up into the rock, in which you may get a glimpse of a large sitting buddha. The Krasae Cave once provided a shelter for the workers to rest when the Wang Po viaduct was being built. It has since been turned into a place for visitors to pray, like many of the limestone caves in the area.
June 17th, 2018 by Pete Silvester
It is here that the adjacent River Kwai Noi – the southern tributary of the Kwai – afforded the Japanese a shortcut through to the next valley, which runs diagonally north all the way to Moulmein on the Indian Ocean coast of Burma. By following this river to its source high in the Tenneserim hills on its northern bank, the Japanese could minimise the number of large bridges it needed to build, and work on the relatively flat gradient in its floodplains. Nevertheless, as here, some points proved challenging as the river pushed up against the hills, as we will soon see.
In the 1980s, as part of its nation-building efforts, the Thai government decided to Dam the Kwai Noi river, creating a reservoir in the valley through which this railway ran, and destroying the possibility that the full railway would be restored and linked again to Burma’s rail network at Moulmein. The area around the reservoirs were designated as national parks by the King, and remain some of Thailand’s most untouched and biodiverse areas.
