A Walk From Rail Mall to Bukit Panjang Level Crossing
By CK Ng, 28 Jun 2011.
Having been inspired by Jerome Lim, author of The Long and Winding Road, I was pleasantly surprised to find that he’ll be leading a walk together from the Rail Mall to the Bukit Panjang Crossing. I’ve actually walked that route the previous week, but I wanted the opportunity to meet him in person so I signed up. I also got Steve and Gilbert who were with me on the last trip to join in, as well as Boon Hwee and Gin Pak.
Being on the last weekend of the train operations on the old line which runs from Tanjong Pagar Railway Station to Woodlands, a record number of more than 100 people turned up, including TV personality Denise Keller. This is also possibly the last of such walks organised by Eugene Tay, owner of the We Support the Green Corridor Facebook page and the Green Corridor web site.
Jerome talking to the 100+ participants of the walk from Rail Mall to Bukit Panjang level crossing. Read more
Tanjong Pagar Railway Station
By CK Ng, 26 Jun 2011.
This weekend marks the last weekend of the train operations along the old railway system in Singapore. During the last few weekends, I’ve been photographing around the Bukit Timah Railway Station several times as I am attracted to the quaint little building and also wanted to capture the old practice of exchanging key tokens.
Today, after bringing Clarence, Jimmy and their friend Lawrence to the station to shoot, we made our way to the Tanjong Pagar Railway Station. The sky was starting to get dark and rain was imminent.
Another Visit to the Bukit Timah Railway Station
By CK Ng, 19 Jun 2011.
After attending the Green Corridor walk to the Bukit Timah Railway Station last week, I decided to get Gilbert as well as another couple of friends to go there to shoot again. I also wanted to get a few shots of the token exchange process, a practice still performed here but will be history once the railway line and land is handed back to the Singapore government come 1 July 2011.
We arranged to meet at 7am at the McDonald’s at King Albert’s Park, but I was disappointed when I woke up to find it raining. After some hesitation, we decided to go ahead as the rain was getting lighter, and by the time we started, there was no more rain. Thankfully we did not give up and go back to bed!
I missed shooting some of the signboards leading up to the station the last time round, so I took them on this trip.
Bukit Timah Railway Station Signboard Read more
End of an era at Tanjong Pagar
By Zakir Hussain, The Straits Times, 1 Jul 2011.
The Sultan of Johor last night joined Malayan Railway (KTM) staff and a crowd of 2,000 people in a sentimental farewell to mark the closure of Tanjong Pagar Railway Station.
With that came the end of an era in rail travel across Singapore. From today, the trains will start and end their journeys at Woodlands Train Checkpoint in the north, as part of an agreement the two governments reached last year.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said yesterday that the resolution of the railway lands issue, a thorn in ties since 1990, marked a ‘historic breakthrough in bilateral relations’.
Source: The Straits Times
Johor Sultan drives the last train out
By Cassandra Chew, The Straits Times, 1 Jul 2011.
ON BOARD THE SPECIAL LAST TRAIN OUT OF TANJONG PAGAR STATION: TRAIN enthusiast Char Lee leaned out the doorway in between train carriages and held his camera to capture the last moments of Malayan Railway’s (KTM) last train travelling through the heart of Singapore.
Along the way, the 30-year-old member of the KTM Railway Fan Club yelled and waved to people who gathered along the route from Tanjong Pagar to Woodlands.
This special train, which left the station at 11pm, an hour after the last scheduled KTM train departed, was driven by Johor Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar.
Small groups of people gathered along the track for a final look.
Source: The Straits Times
Tanjong Pagar railway station to go in style
By Zakir Hussain and Amresh Gunasingham, The Straits Times, 23 Jun 2011.
The last Malayan Railway (KTM) train will pull out of Tanjong Pagar station a week from today, with as much fanfare as when the first train rumbled in almost 80 years ago.
At the controls will be Johor Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar, who obtained his locomotive driving licence last year, KTM and palace officials said yesterday.
The scheduled 10pm departure from Tanjong Pagar will be marked by a KTM-organised send-off party attended by officials, guests and station staff, among others.
At midnight, Singapore will take ownership of the station – which opened in 1932 – following a breakthrough agreement with Malaysia last year.
KTM will then move its operations in Singapore to the Woodlands Train Checkpoint, where it will open a ticketing counter on July 1.
Source: The Straits Times
The Green Corridor: Wildlife, Alive and Dead, along the Tracks
By Daphne, 25 Apr 2011.
Warning: The following post includes gruesome photos of dead animals, which may cause discomfort to some readers.
Long tail macaques. Monitor Lizards. The rare pangolin. The common changeable lizard. Various species of snakes.
Long tail macaques are a common sight at the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, of which the railway tracks pass near to the entrance of.
These are but a few animals that can be found along the section of the KTM railway tracks that run from the Bukit Timah Railway Station up till the road next to the soon-to-be-converted-into-a-condomium Ten Mile Junction.
Unfortunately, some of these animals may have fallen victim to “road-killâ€, or rather “track-kill†by passing trains. Read more
Jurong Line: Wildlife and Old Times in the Forest
By Daphne, 11 Apr 2011.
The Jurong Line leading from Sunset Way to King Albert Park, compared to the walk from Teban Gardens to the Faber Hills Estate, is a relatively easy trek as the terrain is flat for most part of it, and the vegetation though dense at certain areas, is easy to navigate. There are occasional fallen trees and branches that one has to be careful of, and extremely muddy areas that one has to cross.
Other than that, however, the walk is an enjoyable one, and also an opportunity to revel in the beauty of the forest and its inhabitants, an experience most people living in Singapore will rarely get exposure to. Most importantly, this section of the Jurong Line reveals little parts of the railway track that have fallen to abandonment – the old signal lights and electrical boxes, items that once controlled the very trains that passed through the area, but now left decrepit, rotting, and useless. Read more
The Green Corridor Forum [14 May]
Saturday, 14 May, 2.00pm – 4.00pm, level 16, POD, National Library
The ‘Green Corridor’ forum is a public discussion on the idea of converting the Keretapi Tanah Melayu (KTM) railway track literally into a “green corridorâ€, free of urban re-development plans once the land parcel is handed over to Singapore on 1 July 2011. This includes reasons why Singapore should protect the natural biodiversity already existing along the railway tracks as well as the community benefits that it brings.
The discussion is led by the Nature Society of Singapore and is joined by established local writers including Madeleine Lee, Suchen Christine Lim & South African writer, Melissa de Villiers.
Participants of ‘Bear Fruit: Railway Memories’ will also be presenting their works based on their memories of the Malayan railway.
About the Speakers
Dr Ho Hua Chew is currently the Chairman of the Conservation Committee in the Nature Society of Singapore. He co-ordinates conservation activities of the Society, such as the formulation of conservation proposals, feedback to government land-use & development plans, biodiversity surveys, etc. He has been doing conservation work for the Nature Society for more than a decade, in the course of which he was involved in the formulation of the conservation plan for Sungei Buloh, the Master Plan for the Conservation of Nature in Singapore, the Society’s EIA pertaining to the government’s golf course at Lower Pierce, etc.
His main field of expertise is bird life and biodiversity conservation, for which he has obtained a great deal of field experience in Singapore and Malaysia, and formal training from Imperial College and the University of East Anglia. He also lectures part-time on Environmental Ethics as well as on Biodiversity Conservation at tertiary institutions.
Tham Wai Hon’s interest in the Green Corridor sprang from his final year thesis at NUS Architecture School in 2006-it questioned the future of Malayan Railway Land. Wai Hon has worked in the fields of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, and is currently working on the National ArtGallery, Singapore at studio Milou Singapore.
Neu Wa O’Neill has previously worked on issues of biodiversity and connectivity with the Wildlands Project in Montana and Colorado in the U.S.A., mapping areas of roadless wilderness and habitat for endangered species. Neu-Wa has a BA in Urban Planning from the University of Hawaii and a Master’s in Architecture from the University of Toronto, and currently works as an architecture associate in Singapore.
This forum is open to the public.
Registration is required at the NLB website.
Source: National Library Board
Jurong Line: Is this Goodbye?
By Daphne, 22 Feb 2011.
It was close to 20 years ago when the last train went down the tracks of the Jurong Line of the KTM Malayan Railway in Singapore. These tracks, which run from the Jurong Industrial park to Bukit Timah, has since been dismantled in part, but mostly left abandoned.
In May 2010, news that Tanjong Pagar Train Station, the only remaining train station part of the KTM Malayan Railway Network that still functions in Singapore, was going to move north to Woodlands broke out. The KTM Malayan Railway has for years brought people and goods from Malaysia to Singapore and vice versa. Since then, there has been speculation as to what would happen to these railway tracks – both the line that runs from Tanjong Pagar to Woodlands, and the Jurong Line.
I took a walk down the Jurong Line, two Sundays ago, and to my dismay, work on removing these tracks had already started.
I had began my walk from Penjuru Road, near the Teban Gardens estate in Jurong, and was wondering why I could not spot any semblance of the tracks – I was even starting to think that I was not going down the right path. Read more
