RAILWAYS of INDONESIA

These pictures were taken at Hualamphong Station , Bangkok, during a brief visit on 16 October 2010. The portrait of King Chulalongkorn (1853 - 1910) the modernizer of Thailand dominates the main hall. In 1891 the King issued a Royal Proclamation for the construction of the first railway line in Thailand between Bangkok and Nakhon Ratchasima. An Altshom AD24C diesel electric locomotive Two General Electric CM22-7i diesel electric locomotives I wished I had the time to ride one of the State Railway of Thailand 's (SRT) trains. I especially would have liked to travel to Kanchanaburi and see the infamous Thai-Burma Death Railway .

The Jakarta Post, August 21, 2000 SEMARANG (JP): It certainly was not as luxurious as the Venice Simplon Orient Express, nor could it match even a fraction of the speed of the TGV or the Shinkansen . Even by Indonesian standards it was not an impressive train. It was just a slow, third-class train with an antiquated passenger coach that had seen better days and a couple of modified freight cars fitted with benches to accommodate passengers. A 1957 BB 200 class General Motors diesel locomotive pulled the whole affair. It was no wonder then that when the daily Pekalongan to Surakarta Pandanaran passenger train stopped running a couple of months ago, nobody really seemed to notice. Yet despite its obscurity, the Pandanaran claims a certain distinction. The Pandanaran was the last passenger train to travel along Indonesia's historically most important railway line. The Semarang to Surakarta and Yogyakarta (the vorstenlanden , or land of the princes) line was the first ever to ...