History of rail transport in Thailand

Memorial locomotive outside the Chachoengsao Junction Railway Station.

The history rail transport in Thailand began with the opening of the Paknam Railway on 11 April 1893.

Previous history

The Kingdom of Siam, the country's name at that time, now known as Thailand. The first Siamese railway projects, which were discussed from the 1840s onwards, were aimed at linking the then British Burma to the Chinese market, which was to be run over Northern Siam for reasons of accessible terrain, a project that had been operating in various variations up to the 1880s, But never realized.[1] A second, early-discussed railway project was to traverse the Isthmus of Kra the narrowest point of the Malay Peninsula with a railway because the Kra-Canal as technically unworkable. However, as the British feared the importance of Singapore, this railway was not built even though the Siamese government had agreed in 1859.[2]

The King of Siam received a model railway in 1856 as a gift from Queen Victoria, which is now exhibited in the Bangkok National Museum. In 1871 King Chulalongkorn (Rama V), who ruled since 1868, first used railways even during state visits to Java and British India. In 1864, the Dutch colonial administration commissioned the first railroad in Southeast Asia.[3]

First Projects

In the 1880s, the Siamese government issued various private consortia concessions for the construction of railways. However, these consortia were mostly speculative companies, which never even started to build their route. In the end, the first viable railway in Siam, however, emerged from such a privately financed initiative: On 11 April 1893, the Metre-gauge railway route Bangkok-Samut Prakan (Paknam) was opened by the king.[4] The king had already made the first cut of the ground for the construction work in 1891.[5]

State Rail

The activities for the construction of a railway network were initially coordinated in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as the entire technology and the knowledge required was only imported from abroad. In 1890, responsibility for the Ministry of Public Works, where it was organized as the Royal Railway Department (RRD).[6]

The government commissioned Sir Andrew Clarke in 1888 to work out plans for a railway network. In 1890 they were available.[7] In November 1888 the railway engineer Karl Bethge (from Krupp) came to Siam and received these plans for assessment from the Siamese government. Both agreed to build a route from Bangkok to Saraburi to Korat (today: Nakhon Ratchasima). The Siamese government called the Bethge, previously promoted in Germany to the royal Prussian building commission, to the Thai state service. He was also head of the RRD in 1890.[8] This was a step in the foreign policy, the Siam neutrality between the neighboring competing colonial powers of Britain (India, Burma, Malaya, Singapore and France (Indochina), thereby retaining the Siamese independence.

North-East Railway

In 1891, by law, the Nakhon Ratchasima Railway Company, the majority of which was located with the state, was established with the aim of building a railway from Bangkok to Korat (Nakhon Ratchasima) in normal gauge with 1435 mm to build. The work was awarded to the English firm Murray Campbell as the best bidder, contrary to Bethge's advice. After two years of preparation, the construction of the North-East Railway was begun on 9 March 1892 by the proclamation of King Chulalongkorn. The tools used for the first cut of the spade, a richly ornamented spade and the associated wheelbarrow, are now also exhibited at the Bangkok National Museum. The management of the building took over George Murray Campbell.

Karl Bethge engaged other German engineers for railway construction, Hermann Gehrts (1854-1914) and Luis Weiler (1836-1918), both of the Prussian State Railways. Weiler reported to his father, who was also a railway engineer, in numerous letters of his work. These are almost all preserved and are now in the archives of the Deutsches Museum in Munich.

On 1 September 1896, the railway administration announced the contract to the British company, since it did not carry out the construction work in accordance with the contract. The work was now continued on its own initiative. At the same time Nakhon Ratchasima Railway Company was nationalized and converted into a State Railways administration. The route was 135 kilometers long at this time. In December 1896, King Chulalongkorn took the opportunity to travel by train to the operating point. On an overhanging rock at 136.5 miles he wrote his name on the rock. The heavily weathered lettering is still to be seen today. On 26 March 1897 the first section of Bangkok was opened to Ayutthaya. This date is today the "official birthday" of the State Railway of Thailand. Before the railway opened, a trip between Bangkok and Korat (Nakhon Ratchasima) took 5 days - now only 6 hours.

Network expansion

King Chulalongkorn and Queen Saovabha Phongsri opening of the railway line in 1900.

On 24 February 1898, the government adopted the principle that all the main routes in the country should be established as national railways.[9] Karl Bethge died by cholera in 1900, his successor, Hermann Gehrts, planned to retire in 1904. In the spring of 1904, therefore, Luis Weiler in Haifa, where he was working on the construction of the Hejaz Railway, became the director general of the Siamese railways. When he took his place, the north-east railway was finished.

In the delivery of the locomotives, German companies such as Henschel and Krupp performed particularly well. In 1909 a total of 49 locomotives from German production went to the Siamese state railway. Wagons were mainly imported from Germany, Belgium, Netherlands and United Kingdom.

With the completion of the work on the north-east railway, the planning under Karl Bethge began for the railroad route of the Southern Railway to Phetchaburi. The construction work began in April 1900. In contrast to the previously established Siamese railway network, east of the Chao Phraya river, which was built in Standard gauge, the state railway chose the Metre-gauge railway, to facilitate a later seamless transition to the also meter-lane tracks in Burma and Malaya.[10] This was all the more easy since the southern railway could not get a rail link to the rest of the network, since a bridge across the Chao Phraya was still missing. The route therefore did not depart from Bangkok's main railway station, Hua Lamphong Station, but had its own terminal station in Thonburi, Thonburi Station, the Station building was designed by the German architect Karl Siegfried Döhring in the style of the Brick Expressionism.

Another project was the Eastern Railway. In 1901 the engineer's geodesy of the route was arranged. However, both the South and the Eastern Railway had a potential for foreign policy: The south and west of Siam belonged to the British and the East to the French interest. The French considered a Siamese railway construction, the moving toward to Indochina, also as a threat. When, shortly after, a revolt broke out in northern Thailand, the state concentrated its resources on the construction of the North Railway (Bangkok - Chiang Mai).[11]

Northern Railway

Chiang Mai Railway Station

Therefore, all efforts were made to build the Northern Railway, which also was not in the area of interest of the European colonial powers. It was built in the final expansion of 661 miles. Since all the routes in Siam have been kilometer from Bangkok and they used the existing north-east railway to "Ban Bachi Junction", their final station has 751 km. In the first days of 1908, it was completed by Phitsanulok at the 389th kilometer. On the 11th of November, the day of the coronation, another 67 kilometers of the northern route were opened. A total of 844 kilometers were now in operation in Siam.

See also

Literature

References

  1. ↑ Whyte: Railway Atlas’’, S. 1f.
  2. ↑ Whyte: Railway Atlas’’, S. 1f.
  3. ↑ Whyte: Railway Atlas, S. 2.
  4. ↑ Whyte: Railway Atlas’’, S. 8.
  5. ↑ Whyte: Railway Atlas’’, S. 8.
  6. ↑ Whyte: Railway Atlas, S. 2.
  7. ↑ Whyte: Railway Atlas, S. 11.
  8. ↑ Whyte: Railway Atlas, S. 2.
  9. ↑ Whyte: Railway Atlas, S. 4.
  10. ↑ Whyte: Railway Atlas, S. 40.
  11. ↑ Whyte: Railway Atlas, S. 34.
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