A Railway from Times Past

So, earlier this week the Dodgess and I went to Malaysia. Sounds very exotic. In fact, we just went over the water to Johor Bahru, which is about 2 minutes from Singapore. And we went for an afternoon, and in fact we didn't really do much once we were there except eat and shop in the nearest shopping mall to the station.

To get there we got on a train at Tanjong Pagar Station. Walking into Tanjong Pagar station is like walking into a time machine and being taken back to the 70s, or perhaps even earlier.

The station entrance hall is a high ceilinged arch. The decoration almost certainly hasn't changed since 1932 when the station opened, and consists of tiles showing scenes of Malaysia. Unlike the old stations in Europe, which have been updated (to varying degrees of success), Tanjong Pagar is completely untouched by progress – there are no electronic screens showing departure times, there are no loud speakers.

Having passed Malaysian immigration; in what is little more than a shed on the platform, we got on the train. Again, something of a time warp. Maybe not back to the 1930s like the station, but back to the 70s probably. 

Then there is the old track infrastructure – again this is out of the 1930s. The points are still changed by mechanics – and men pulling. The single track is still managed by the 'hand bag' system that my Dad explained to me on a single track stretch of the line between Knaresborough and York. It truly is like going back in time.

And whilst this nostalgia is all very well, it is of course the problem too. Going by train to Malaysia is not a modern way at the moment. You need to get off the train to go through Singaporean immigration at Woodlands. The train is low, and the ride quality is, well, 20^th Century. And so this fabled section of line will close within the next two weeks.

There will still be a rail link. Next time, I would travel from a modern new station at Woodlands, and get off at a most modern station in JB, both with stylish smooth lines and curved steel trusses, and lots of tv screens.

But, it won't be the same – not only are the modern stations nothing like the architectural marvel of Tanjong Pagar, but Woodlands just is not really the place to get on and off the train. It's just a long way from the centre. 

There is a very great joy to travelling on Eurostar – you arrive at sensitively restored architectural marvels in the centre of both London and Paris, and it is fast - less than 3 hours. I agree that the Tanjong Pagar branch is not fast, and not attractive for travel, but its location is the tops, and I can't help think that any prospect of a high speed link from central Singapore to KL has gone.

 

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One of the most memorable holidays I ever went on was to Austria, in order to see a solar eclipse. It was a fab experience, and a fab holiday. So the prospect of seeing a full lunar eclipse was something that the Dodgess and I were quite happy to wake up at 3 am to see.

In Austria, we climbed to the top of a mountain, into a cloud. We were very upset until about half an hour before the eclipse when the clouds quite miraculously cleared and we saw the sun disappear.

So when we woke up to a cloudy sky I wasn't too worried to be honest. I mean, the clouds would obviously clear once again.

Well, they did begin to clear. By dropping all the rain. And oh my did the clouds have a lot of rain to drop. We waited, and waited, for like an hour and more. And we got nowhere near seeing any sky at all. Still – here's a couple of photos to prove the endeavour: