History of rail transport in Myanmar


began in 1877. Three private rail companies were nationalised nineteen years later. During the Japanese occupation of Burma, Allied prisoners of war were forced to build the Burma Railway. Myanmar Railways has expanded its network somewhat since 1988.

1877-1896

Rail transport was introduced in Burma in May 1877 with the opening of the Rangoon-to-Prome line by the Irrawaddy Valley State Railway. The line, following the Irrawaddy River, was built over a three-year period with labour imported from India. Unusually for a British colonial railway, it was built to 1,000 mm metre gauge. In 1884 the Sittang Valley State Railway, a new company, opened a line along the Sittang River from Rangoon to Toungoo via Pegu. The Irrawaddy line was considered commercially important because it could transport rice from the valley to the main port at Rangoon, and the Sittang line was strategically important because of Toungoo's proximity to the border with Upper Burma. This became evident at the start of the Third Anglo-Burmese War and during the unrest which followed the war. The construction of the two lines cost £1,926,666; the railway was profitable by 1888, returning more than five percent on capital investment. With the annexation of Upper Burma, the railway was extended by from Toungoo to Mandalay in 1889. The Mu Valley State Railway was formed after the opening of this section, and construction began on a rail line from Sagaing to Myitkyina connecting Mandalay to Shwebo, Wuntho, Katha and Myitkyina. This railway created a continuous line from Rangoon to Myitkyina through the Kachin Hills, except for a ferry crossing of the Irrawaddy at Sagaing. The Inwa Bridge at Sagaing, Burma's only bridge across the Irrawaddy, opened in 1934 with two decks: one for road traffic and one for trains.

1896-1945

In 1896, before the completion of the line to Myitkyina, the rail companies were combined into the publicly owned Burma Railway Company. Between 1898 and 1905, another of railway was built. A branch line from the Rangoon-Pyay railroad connected Bassein in the Irrawaddy delta to Rangoon, and the Mandalay-Hsipaw-Lashio railway ran through the Shan Hills. The latter railway included the Gokteik viaduct, a, viaduct across the Gokteik gorge near Nawnghkio. When it was built, it was the longest such viaduct in the world. The track rises in a continuous 1:40 gradient, and the viaduct was considered an engineering marvel at the time. The Mandalay-Lashio railway was planned to extend to Kunlong and into China's Yunnan province, but the plan was abandoned because of the difficult terrain. In 1907, a line opened connecting Pegu and Moulmein. The line ran to Martaban, on the Gulf of Martaban at the mouth of the Salween River, and passengers had to take a ferry to Moulmein. Until the Thanlwin Bridge opened in 2006, it was impossible to travel from Rangoon to Moulmein by rail. The Burma Mines Railway, an 80-kilometre narrow-gauge line from Namyao via Namtu to Bawdwin, was completed in 1908.
After the First World War, a line was built between Moulmein and Ye at the northern end of the Mergui Archipelago. Burma's last major rail line, from Thazi on the Rangoon-Mandalay line to Kalaw was built between 1914 and 1918. In 1928, the Burma Railway Company was dissolved; the railways were brought directly under government operation and renamed Burma Railways. Around this time, they began to lose money because of competition from road transport. With return on capital declining, Burma Railways became the country's single largest debt item when the financial separation of India and Burma took place in 1937. The company's coal and rolling stock were imported from India or Britain.

Siam-Burma Railway

The British had long planned to construct a railway line connecting India with Siam and China. British companies examined the possibility of building a railway from Rangoon to Yunnan to link with a second line from Bangkok to Yunnan, but were unable to obtain financial backing.
When the Japanese occupied Thailand and Burma, they decided to build a railway connecting their Southeast Asian territories with Burma. Since Yunnan was in Chinese hands under Chiang Kai-shek, they looked for a southern route to Burma from Thailand and settled on a line from Ban Pong to Thanbyuzayat across the mountains separating the two countries. Since Thanbyuzayat was on the Moulmein-Ye railway line and Ban Pong connected to Bangkok via Kanchanaburi, the line would provide a direct connection between Bangkok and Rangoon. The Japanese built the lines with Allied prisoners of war, and an estimated 15,000 POWs and 150,000 others died during the construction of the railway—about 675 deaths per mile. Its construction is depicted in the film, The Bridge on the River Kwai.

1945 to present

In 1942, The country had of meter-gauge track in 1942, but during World War II the Japanese removed about. By the end of the war, were operational in four isolated sections. During the postwar era, the rail network was rebuilt. By 1961 the network was long, remaining constant until the opening of a line from Kyaukpadaung to Kyini in October 1970. This began an upsurge in construction and track-doubling, and Myanmar Railways operated 11 divisions over of track by 2000. Most routes are single-track, although large portions of the Yangon-Pyay and Yangon-Mandalay routes are double-track. The railway had a total length of in December 2008, including the Yangon-Mandalay line's double-track section.

Improvements