Back to the Future: On Track for a Green Corridor

 In Singapore, the Malaysian Railway service has been stopped in its tracks! But many hope the tracks deserve to be kept not only as a green belt, but also a moving museum. Everyone, especially those who grew up spoilt by the comforts of today’s MRT, needs a glimpse into how we used to travel, and how, as commuters, we got to where we are today. To keep a perspective of where we are headed, we need to keep looking out the windows of our rides, both past and present, says the Straits Times Eisen Teo.

By Eisen Teo, The Straits Times, 25 Jun 2011.

If Singapore’s MRT system is a symbol of a thriving young nation, the elder railway system is its cranky grandparent.

Yet this cantankerous relic was Singapore’s brave new world in 1903, just as the MRT would be eight decades later.

Both were firsts. Before they rolled out, this nation had never before had a vehicle carry so many passengers (and goods) as far or as fast. The history of both systems, too, has become a part of this nation’s narrative.

The tale begins with the older railway, constructed between 1900 and 1902 to foster greater commerce between the port of Singapore and the vast agricultural and mining hinterland of Malaya – both of them then colonies of the British.

Its completed tracks spanned the breadth of the country, starting at Tank Road near Fort Canning Hill, passing the shophouses of Orchard Road and Cairnhill and through the forests of Bukit Timah, before terminating at Woodlands.

In length, its tracks matched the longest roads in Singapore then, and the locomotives – nicknamed ‘iron horses’ – promised speeds of up to 50kmh, faster than any vehicle in Singapore at the time. (The first car, imported in 1896, clocked only 30kmh tops.)

Today, however, it has long outlived its purpose. It gave way to the MRT on Nov 7, 1987, which opened with five stations over 6km of track.

Then, 120,000 people bought first-day tickets. I was three.

I have grown as the MRT has matured, and it today boasts 79 stations over about 130km of track. Ridership breached the two-million-a-day mark last year, and the system is still growing.

It represents what we want of 21st-century Singapore – fast, clean, efficient, precision-timed. We moan when a train stalls or pulls into the station a minute late, as if it is a crime because our lives hinge on how well it runs.

On the flip side, the railway train is a reminder of what Singapore once was, still invisibly tethering us to our northern neighbour years after the painful childbirth that was our independence.

As a population mainly made of MRT commuters, we cannot imagine getting around our island via other means.

As I compare the two systems, I cannot help feeling an unspoken link with our ancestors, railway passengers from decades past who saw the tracks as their main link to loved ones up north.

Much of the Singapore segment of that railway will soon be gone. Next Friday, following an agreement between the governments of Malaysia and Singapore, operations to and from the Tanjong Pagar Railway Station, built in 1932 to replace the Tank Road terminus, will cease.

The southern terminus of Malaysia’s main railway operator will be shifted to Woodlands, just shy of the Causeway.

The rustic rail

For millennials, the loss of that bit of our transport heritage could be more than just a closure of these aged tracks.

After a lifetime of riding the MRT, taking the railway can be a jarring, otherworldly experience, as I found out earlier this week when I boarded it for a ride from Tanjong Pagar to Segamat, Johor.

I wanted to pay my dues, especially as a history buff, before Tanjong Pagar ceased operations.

As I stepped into the cavernous hall of the station with its beautiful murals, my first thought was: Wow, it’s really hot. No swanky air-conditioned hangout, just a stifling stillness. The air was thick with humidity, and each breath came tinged with a faint but persistent smell of sweat and unwashed clothes.

At the ticket counter stood a queue of more than 40 Singaporeans, Malaysians and tourists waiting patiently. Nowhere was there the mad rush of the daily MRT commute; harrying these languid ticket officials, the general consensus seemed, would get you nowhere.

My train pulled out of the station half an hour behind schedule, enough time for me to contemplate the station’s departure gate – literally a metal gate – and a platform floor smooth from nearly 80 years of polishing by untold numbers of shoes. Everyone waited for the train to move, accepting the tardiness as a given.

My world-weary train, at least, promised no more than it could deliver. It was a contraption that was ancient, loud, rumbling, rickety and dirty.

Upon the suggestion of a friend, I opened a carriage door while the train was at full throttle and stuck my head out. The feeling of wind and dust in my face as the world rushed by was priceless. While a conductor immediately turned up to tell us to shut the door, we just waited until he walked off before doing it again.

Even the train and station officials seemed to have stepped out of a poetic page from history – the rhythms of their waved flags and blown whistles at every stop were an almost orchestral display compared with the regulated automation of the MRT.

Outside the train was a different world, too. In the half-hour it took to rumble from Tanjong Pagar to Woodlands, I observed narrow strips of land on either side of the tracks, still undeveloped and laced with lalang. While rides on the MRT depict the present and future of my country, rides on the granddaddy of trains took me back into its past.

Any conservation of the tracks between Tanjong Pagar and Woodlands surely would be a way of paying homage to the Singapore we all came from, the same way we might honour the contributions of our grandparents to this nation.

The tracks deserve to be kept not only as a green belt, but also a moving museum. Everyone, especially those who grew up spoilt by the comforts of today’s MRT, needs a glimpse into how we used to travel, and how, as commuters, we got to where we are today.

To keep a perspective of where we are headed, we need to keep looking out the windows of our rides, both past and present.

Source: www.thegreencorridor.org