Letting off steam in Thonburi, Bangkok

Thonburi railway sheds, State Railway of Thailand, Bangkok

Thonburi railway sheds, State Railway of Thailand, Bangkok

Thonburi railway sheds, State Railway of Thailand, Bangkok

Thonburi railway sheds, State Railway of Thailand, Bangkok

Machine shop, Thonburi railway sheds, State Railway of Thailand, Bangkok

Video #1 – Thonburi railway yards, Bangkok

Video #2 – Thonburi railway yards, Bangkok

IT WAS BANGKOK AGAIN and the frantic energy of the megacity. By late afternoon i reached my hotel in the Riverside District. Being January 26, it was also the half way point on this six week trip of Southeast Asia. The next day i crossed  the Chao Phraya River and back to somewhat familiar ground, in the district of Thonburi. Under the glare of the morning sun i followed a busy road, away from the riverside. I walked beside a hulking hospital complex entering a rundown area. Went by a street market and crossed a dirt lot which brought me up against a tangled perimeter of vegetation. What on earth was i doing in this part of town? Some steam locomotives drew me here.

Although i am no train spotter and hardly a serious rail enthusiast for that matter, the subject was always of mild interest. Infantile or not, those iron engines were embedded in my earliest memories, and for good reason too. One toddler memory was a summer day, perhaps in 1953, There was my Dad, in his Ford pickup truck, racing a logging steam locomotive. We were near Honeymoon Bay on Vancouver Island. From the cab, i remember sunlight and shadows playing off the moving locomotive and a dramatic plume of black smoke trailing above. The road was more or less parallel to the tracks and the chugging monster would disappear and then reappear out of the forest. Our little adventure, complete with a dash of speed, was a big beautiful memory for a toddler like me. At the time, we lived on a small farm. Here too the romance for those iron beasts was further fortified by their distant movements, down in a little valley – the mournful whistle of passing trains would echo through the stands of timber and across the pastures. 

Now i was following an oily and gravelly way, between the rails. A big shed, which straddled the tracks, lay just ahead. I picked my way around a half dozen steam locomotives. Most of these big engines were Japanese; Kawasaki's and Mitsubishi's, including a few pre-war models. There was even a very antique looking Henschel as well – a compact looking German locomotive used for shunting wagons around the yard. It was Sunday and nearly noon, and the mood here was sleepy and relaxed. The few people in sight, included the skeleton staff and some women and children too. Of course this tourist, with his mild gastrointestinal handicap, was prowling around the place too, in a somewhat groggy state. On the wall, an old TV set blared, near a silent locomotive. To complete this picture was a man sprawled out on an old sofa, looking at his cell phone. Back in the sunlight i could see laundry drying beyond the zone of iron and oil. Woman and children stood in front of some huts. Work and domesticity blended into one, here at the State Railway of Thailand yards. It was time to leave the depot with it's freight of industrial history.

Overview of the Thai rail system:

State Railway of Thailand - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Item by a Thai blogger, which is informative, and about the the train depot:
go to thailand: Steam locomotives in Thonburi train depot