The end of the Line.

After more than 50 years, the Malaysian KTM railway line and the land it sits on were finally surrendered back to Singapore on 1st July 2011. The railway tracks will soon be dismantled while the government ponders over the fate of the strip of land that runs from Tanjong Pagar to Woodlands.

With the exception of the Tanjong Pagar Station, which is now gazetted as a national monument, the rest of the infrastructure will disappear by the end of this month. These include the bottleneck bridges at Hillview, Hindhede and Sunset Way which I previously wrote about.  (click here for that blog)

Today I visited the truss bridge at Upper Bukit Timah and wandered along the tracks up to Hillview for a last look. Not surprisingly, so many others were also there to capture that last piece of memorabilia before it's all gone.

That bridge near the Rail Mall holds a bit more memories for me than any other part of the railway line. For about 10 years between the 70s & 80s, I  lived at Fuyong Estate which is located just beside that bridge. (Rail Mall is part of Fuyong Estate, here in this blog).

The truss bridge over Upper Bukit Timah Road.
Fuyong Estate is located just on the left of the photo.

The railway line is open to visitors till the end of July.

More pictures of the railway can be found on my photo blog here.

Postscript (9 July 2011)

Access to the tracks from Chia Eng Say Road (top photo) was a bit bit treacherous on the day I visited, but within the week, someone had graciously carved out a temporary flight of steps (above). 

So now it'll be easier for anyone who want to look at the railway one last time.
After July, it will be out-of-bounds to the public.

Diplomacy untangle bottlenecks

The prime ministers of Singapore and Malaysia had recently resolved the decades old impasse over the KTM railway running across the island of Singapore. This rail line (including 33 feet of land on both sides of the track)  literally splits Singapore in half from north to south. From the Causeway at Woodlands right into the heart of Singapore to the station at Tanjong Pagar. The land that the rail sits on belongs to Malaysia, being 'given' by the past colonial government.

This resulted in the most usual immigration clearance found no where else in the world.
By going through the Malaysian immigration point at Tanjong Pagar Railway Station, you legally 'enter' Malaysia without even leaving Singapore .  What's more, technically you can 'leave'  Singapore and 're-enter' by simply getting off the train at Woodlands without ever leaving the country. What a headache for immigration authorities! Haha.

Hillview Road passing under the RTM railway track

My own personal interest on the event being that, finally after decades,  I soon won't be stuck at the bottleneck that is Hillview Road.  Hillview Road passes under the KTM railway track but as the land belongs to Malaysia,  the road has never been widened ever since it was built. 

Over the years the underpass evolved into a major choke point. The 2-lane road, fine as it was when built in the 1950s, became a constriction to the growing development in the area.  Hopefully, this will be resolved in July 2011, when the Malaysians return the land to Singapore.

I guess the same goes for 2 other bottlenecks caused by the KTM railway line that I know of. 

One is at Sunset Way at Clementi and the other at Hindhede Road near Bukit Timah Hill. 

Road constriction at Sunset Way, Clementi.

Bottleneck at its worst at Hindhede Road, 1 lane passable only.