Out along the tracks

A well-preserved Pacific steam locomotive next to the railway station in Phnom Penh

Saturday afternoon = free time, so I paid a quick visit to the railway station in Phnom Penh, specifically on the hunt for the railway sheds that I was told contained some rusting, ancient steam locomotives. Not that I'm a railway buff, though as a kid I was a keen train-spotter back in England and used to travel all over the UK logging train numbers, before I discovered football and girls! Someone had asked me to seek out these old loco's, so I did a bit of ferreting around this afternoon. I didn't hang around the railway station itself as the guy at the gate was asking silly money, so instead I took the moto along the tracks for about half a kilometre, eliciting stares and smiles from the owners of the ramshackle corrugated shacks that pose as homes for the people who live next to the railway line and back onto Boeung Kak lake. The well-preserved steam locomotive in the top picture is located near the entrance to the railway yards. The two rusting and decrepit Pacific loco's pictured here can be found further down the line, alongwith a few shunting engines and two large railway sheds which I was told contain around eight steam loco's and various carriages and rolling stock, but the man with the keys was not about. So to get inside will require another visit, and no doubt a few dollars to grease the wheels, so to speak. It was my first time along the tracks and the people I met including the female security guards were all very pleasant. I rounded off the visit with a glass of sugar-cane juice and visited some friends in Tuol Kauk.

A Pacific steam loco left to rot and rust and now only good for scrap

Another Pacific steam loco left to the elements

The front of the steam locomotive, which will soon succumb to the bushes growing all around it

One of the regularly used shunting engines at the railway yards

These railway sheds are used for repairing both engines and carriages, though the ones in the foreground are not good examples of their handiwork!

The main railway sheds where eight steam loco's are housed

This is the main track that the trains used to take on the way to Kampot and Sihanoukville before they were stopped