In December 1941 the Imperial Japanese Army invaded Thailand from Cambodia and the Gulf of Thailand, in response to which Britain sent out Prince of Wales and Repulse. These were promptly sunk by Japanese aircraft and in a matter of weeks the Japanese had conquered Burma. On 15 February 1942 the British stronghold of Singapore fell and a British force of almost 85,000 men was taken in to captivity. These included Australian, Indian and local troops. Unable to gain command of the sea, the Japanese then decided to build a rail connection through Thailand to Burma and on to India in pursuit of their strategic intent to invade India.
Jeath War Museum
To build this railway system they decided to use the POWs for this task. The meter gauge railway line started from Nong Pladuk passing through Kanchanaburi and then crossing the Kwai River to continue along the Kwae Noi River to the Burmese Border. At the same time work started from Burmese border southward from the area around Three Pagodas Pass to meet the line coming north.
Wang Pho Viaduct
These routes passed through dense jungle-covered mountains and involved construction of more than 300 bridges and trestles, as well as major rock cuttings. The line was finally finished on 17 October 1943 when the two sections of the line met about 18 km south of the Three Pagodas Pass at Konkuita. A golden spike was driven in to mark the occasion.
Chungkai Cutting
Over 60,000 prisoners of war mostly British and also Indian, and 200,000 Asian laborers slogged under primitive conditions to build the bridge. Many died during the 8-month-long-construction due to disease, dehydration, starvation, terrorizing torture, and suicide. Sixteen thousand died, as did 100,000 Asian slave labourers building the line, earning the railway “Death Railway” title
Kanchanaburi War Cemetery
The most famous portion of the railway is Bridge 277, ‘The Bridge over the River Kwai’, immortalized by the French writer Pierre Boulle in his best selling novel of the same name. The first wooden bridge over the River Kwai was finished in February 1943, followed by a concrete and steel bridge in June 1943.
Train No-486 from Namtok to Thonburi on the Kwai River bridge
Begining from the Bridge from Kanchanaburi side
The original iron bridge was brought from Java by Japanese armed forces and reassembled by POW labor . It consisted of 11 steel spans, with the remainder made of wood. The two bridges were successfully bombed on 13 February 1945 by the Royal Air Force. Repairs were carried out by POW labor and by April the wooden trestle bridge was back in operation. On 3 April a second raid by Liberator bombers of the U.S. Army Air Forces damaged the wooden bridge once again. Repair work continued and both bridges were operational again by the end of May. A second raid by the R.A.F. on 24 June put the railway out of use till the end of war.
After the Japanese surrender, the British Army removed 3.9 kilometers of track on the Thai-Burma border. The remaining track was sold to Thai Railways. Three of the spans of the Kwai Bridge destroyed by Allied bombing were replaced with two angular steel spans built by Yokogawa bridge works, Tokyo. The wooden spans were also replaced by steel.
The present day rails on the bridge have been built in 1911
Girders built by Yokogawa bridge works, Tokyo
Kwai River Bridge station
The 130 km Ban Pong–Namtok section was re-laid and is still in use today from Thonburi to SaiYok in Thailand. A large part of the original railway line beyond Namtok is now submerged under the Vajiralongkorn Dam and covered by dense forests at the Burma border.
