End of the line for Cambodia's one-of-a-kind 'Bamboo Train'

With a wooden platform jerry-rigged to a small engine, Cambodia's one-of-a-kind "Bamboo Train" delights tourists as it clatters through bucolic countryside - but its days are numbered as the Southeast Asian nation plans a railways overhaul.

The bamboo-lined flat trollies are a testament to Cambodian creativity and enterprise in an impoverished nation with little infrastructure.

They were first invented as part of a homegrown, unofficial transport system to make use of the country's abandoned colonial-era train tracks but later morphed into a popular tourist attraction.

"It was good to finally have some breeze happening (on) my face," exclaimed 25-year-old Swedish tourist Josefin Strang, after completing a ride on the rickety cart under a blazing tropical sun.

"I'm actually happy that it was the bamboo train and not an ordinary train, because that track was not in good shape," she laughed.

But the hallowed site in northwestern Battambang province will soon be no more as a government project to refurbish the country's dilapidated rail system inches closer.

That is especially worrying news for the community of drivers, ticket-takers and snack vendors who live off the proceeds from the unique attraction that has become a fixture on the tourist circuit.

"We are very worried about how we will make a daily income good enough to feed ourselves," said 49-year-old Soy Savuth.

He is one of several drivers who spend their days shuttling a trolly up and and down the seven-kilometre track, charging foreigners $5 a ride.

Built under French colonial rule, Cambodia's railroads once ran from the southwestern seaport of Sihanoukville, then known as Kompong Som, to the capital and up north to the Thai border. But decades of civil war and neglect left vast stretches of track in ruins or overgrown with weeds.

With cars a luxury of the rich and roads in similarly bad shape, Cambodians started building their own small bamboo trollies in the 1980s to ferry people and goods across the countryside.

Source: Khaleej Times