This was a short day trip organised by Melvin to actually catch a train from the soon to be closed KTM railway station at Tanjong Pagar.
Our itinerary would be to catch the train at the Tanjong Pagar Railway Station, also known as Keppel Railway Station or Singapore Railway Station. The railway station & the tracks which the Keretapi Tanah Melayu (KTM) operates on are on a 999 year lease.
Since then, there has been negotiations between the Singapore & Malaysian governments to return the land back to Singapore. KTM was scheduled to return the station & railroads back to the Singapore people on the 1st July 2011.
In 1919, the construction of the Singapore – Johore causeway began. 4 years later, it was opened to goods trains on the 17th of September 1923, followed by passenger trains on the 1st of October 1923.
I remembered we were meeting at the station at 0745 to catch the KTM train at 0830 to Kluang. In my true blue fashion, I turned up at the train station with a major hangover! We were actually quite lucky to plan this trip slightly earlier as the week after our trip, train tickets were sold out rather quickly as many people would like to board the train from Tanjong Pagar Railway before it ceases operations at Tanjong Pagar Railway Station.
I think it took us about 2 hours go get to Kluang. First stop, breakfast itself at the railway station. The smell of coffee & kaya toast really heighten up the sensors in the morning.
We took a walk around Kluang town for the rest of the day. Based on my experience with other more touristy areas of Malaysia, Kluang was rather a sleep town. We walked passed abandoned shopping centers, run down open air shops etc. Of course, a stop by for lunch as well, I cant exactly remember the exact location of it but we had really good chicken rice accompanied with roast pork & bbq pork.
We did further walking around the town, exploring & half of the time, no idea where we were heading to. As the sun began setting, we made out way back to the Kluang Raiway Station to catch a train ride to return to Singapore. If I remember correctly, our return trip took almost 3 hours due to delays on the track.
On the return leg, we had a whole lot of Japanese old folks in the first class cabins with us. It was a nice & enjoyable ride back, just being on train getting into another country was kind of a different feeling for me as I’m used to jetting around in planes. It was a good experience & hopefully one day, when KTM comes out with faster trains, I would be able to backpack on train from Singapore to Thailand.
Photographers: Melvin Tan, Thomas Tan, Gary Wang
