Chumphon Railway Station

Location: 10.502254, 99.176788

Chumphon Train Station is 486.53 km from Bangkok and can be found on the western side of town.

The original station was constructed in 1916. The station building was rebuilt in 1948 in its current style after the original building was destroyed by Allied bombing in 1945.

On the approach road to the Station are three old steam locomotives. One is a scale model of a steam locomotive (No. 9), with the larger two being decommissioned steam engines.

Lining the southern side of the approach road is a row of wooden railway staff houses. These houses date back to a much earlier era when State Railways of Thailand gave more generous benefits to their staff. The gates to some of the houses still show the SRT logo in the iron work. The houses themselves are interesting as they are wooden on tall columns raising the floor of the house at least 3 meters off the ground. This being a traditional design of housing at the time in the South of Thailand, in areas prone to flooding.

Here is a rather nice aerial view of the station taken by ArMoo.

With the limited number of trains passing through Chumphon often wondered why the marshaling yards are so large. After a bit of research found it was the down to when the Japanese occupied Thailand. Chumphon station became an important engineering and supply base for a new railway across to Ranong. This railway line only operated for a short period being destroyed by Allied bombing. Further details can be found - Kra Isthmus Railway