Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ing a Muslim community that lived here, donating land on the opposite bank of the canal
for them. An Ayutthaya-era Buddhist temple, Wat Amarintharam, stands on the edge of
the station land and lost three of its four assembly halls, consequently becoming known
by the locals as
bot noi
, or small chapel.
A Japanese locomotive outside Thonburi Station, originally the southern rail terminus.
Following the restructuring of the railway administration system, the decision was
taken to build a bridge further upriver, at Bang Sue, and this, the Rama
VI
Bridge, opened
in 1927. It was the first bridge across the Chao Phraya. Trains for the south now departed
from Hua Lampong Station, and Thonburi was left to service only the western line. When
the Japanese forces occupied Siam in 1941, they used the station as their base for what be-
came known as the Death Railway, the railway line they laid up to Three Pagodas Pass and
through to Burma. The Allied forces bombed and destroyed Thonburi Station but after the
war it was rebuilt in the same style, a European design in pale red brick with cream detail-
ing and pale blue window shutters, the oblong structure topped with a square clocktower.
There were, however, few trains: the line is used by commuters living in the Thonburi sub-
urbs and the neighbouring province of Nakhon Pathom, and by tourists travelling to the
Bridge on the River Kwai in Kanchanaburi, but its old status as an important terminus
had ended. The station was decommissioned late in 2003, and Bangkok Noi Station, 800
metres down the line, became the terminus and was renamed Thonburi Station. For al-
most a decade the original station remained empty, with grand plans swirling around for a
transport museum and railway park. The station became, briefly, a tourist centre. Then it
was used as a setting for a Jackie Chan film,
AroundtheWorldin80Days
, and the work of
the film crew who had transformed it into Agra Station remained visible for several years.
The sidings and railway sheds became the haunt of railway anoraks, as there were some
picturesque old steam and diesel locomotives in storage there. The market that had grown
up next to the station was persuaded to move down the line to the replacement terminus,
and the station building became a lonely and abandoned place. No one knew what was
going to happen.
