Cambodia’s sole passenger train yesterday resumed a regular weekend service after being suspended for years, with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen climbing aboard to inaugurate the first trip.
“Today is a very important day for the railway,” Royal Railway Cambodia chief executive officer John Guiry said, before the train rolled out of the capital Phnom Penh for Sihanoukville, a southwestern seaport.
The Southeast Asian nation has more than 600km of track extending from its northern border with Thailand down to the southern coast, but decades of war and neglect have left vast stretches of the network damaged.
Photo: EPA
“The train and railway were almost totally destroyed by war more than 40 years ago,” Hun Sen wrote on Facebook — a forum the prime minister has embraced with gusto in recent months. “Because our country is now at peace, we have the opportunity to rebuild our transport infrastructure,” he added.
The premier, who has been in power for more than three decades, also published several dozen photographs of himself greeting local passengers and chatting to orange-robed monks in the packed train cars.
The nearly 270km route, which passes through farmland and follows part of the country’s scenic coast, was reopened to passenger cars for a trial period during the Khmer New Year holiday earlier this month.
Trains are now scheduled to run once a day in either direction from Friday through Sunday.
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