Private businessmen came up with the first plans, and the Governor of SurinameCornelis Lely announced in 1902 that the government would build the railway to ease the exploitation of the gold fields. The track was intended to be more than long, but was built only halfway since the gold fields were not as efficient as hoped for. In 1903 former seamen from Curacao began building the track from Paramaribo to ; this section opened in 1905. They completed the section to Dam at the Sarakreek in 1912. The rail track was by then long and had cost 8.5 million Surinamese guilder. A aerial cable car crossed the Suriname River, as building a bridge was considered too expensive. The passengers had to disembark the train at the Cable station and cross the river in a simple gondola lift. On the other side of the river, another train waited to bring them to the terminus at the Sarakreek. When the Brokopondo Reservoir filled up in the 1960s, the track from Brownsberg Nature Park to the cable car was intentionally flooded and had to be taken out of use. The remainder was decommissioned in the 1980s. The last train departed in 1987. In the 1990s Peter Sul of tried to reuse the remaining 86 km for tourist trains, but failed to do so. Since then, some of the rolling stock rots away at the former Onverwacht station. The track in the jungle is overgrown and the section between Paramaribo and Onverwacht has been lifted.
Rolling stock
Steam locomotives were used initially, but were replaced in 1954 by diesel railcars for passenger transport.
Steam locomotives
The German locomotive manufacturer Borsig in Berlin delivered the first set of six steam locomotives with serial numbers 5339 to 5344 and a weight of 16 t each. Their design was based on the tram engines successfully used at the Semarang Railway in Indonesia. In 1905 the Arnold Jung Lokomotivfabrik in Kirchen, Germany, built two small steam locomotives with a weight of 8.5 t each, for use south of the Suriname River. On arrival, they had to be disassembled at the cable car station and reassembled on the other side, after crossing the river by cable car. They were named Kadjoe and Maabo. In 1908 the German locomotive manufacturer Krauß & Comp. in Munich built two 16 t sister locomotives, Gege and Dam, with serial numbers 6074 and 6075. One of them is now plinthed in Onverwacht. In 1916 the Dutch locomotive manufacturer in Breda built the steam locomotivePara, which is now stored with two passenger coaches at the former Onverwacht station.
Diesel rail cars
An American railcar with the number L.S.3 demonstrated the benefits of internal combustion engines instead of steam engines. In 1954 the German joint venture Linke-Hofmann-Busch/Büssing built a three-car DMU with 160 PS for the Lawa Railway. It consisted of a motor coach with 14 seats in 1st class and 26 seats in 2nd class. The middle coach had 56 seats in 3rd class, and the last coach provided 31 seats in 3rd class and a freight capacity of 3 t. In addition, the Lawa Railway had several inspection cars and motorised draisines.
Passenger and goods wagons
The Belgian rolling stock manufacturer Metallurgique in Marchienne-au-Pont provided 15 passenger cars with 12 windows each and fixed sun shades. For excursions, three tarpaulin-covered wagons were used, for example during the inspection of the railway and cable car by Governor Aarnoud van Heemstra in July 1923. A caravan style box was placed on an eight-wheeler flat car to provide a posh environment for refreshments. Until 1959, one hundred bogie tank cars with eight wheels each were used for transporting jet fuel from the harbour in Paramaribo to the airport in Zanderij, a hazardous undertaking considering the sparks being ejected from the funnels of the steam locomotives.
Literature and film
In 1923 the Surinamese teacher and author Richard O'Ferrall published under the pseudonym Ultimus a satirical novel about building the railway, titled Een Beschavingswerk, een sociaal- en economisch-politieke studie in romanvorm. The novel sketches an ironic vision of the gigantomania of governments, the disrespectful attitude toward maroons and indigenous people, and the truculence of the Royal Family and the idiocy of the civilisation missions. The Dutch filmmaker filmed in 2002 a documentary The Gold Line for the broadcasting company Humanistische Omroep, in which he showed old black-and-white films of the Lawa Railway.
Current plans
The government of Suriname announced in November 2014 detailed plans for a new railway from Paramaribo to Onverwacht. The Dutch company proposes to start at the Poelepantje station in Paramaribo towards the south with stations at Latour, Hannaslust, Welgedacht, Lelydorp, Bernharddorp and Onverwacht. The construction was originally estimated to last 12 months at approximately €130 million cost. In a second phase, the line could be extended to the Johan Adolf Pengel International Airport.
