Train Trip to Tenom

The first things I noticed were the raintrees standing at the edge of the padang. They were massive and must be very old and, therefore, have witnessed a lot of events. I wonder what they’d say if they could talk. The next thing I realized was the quietness and the leisurely way the people went about doing whatever it was they did.



Huge raintrees at the edge of the padang



After a glass of cold lemon tea and some toast, it was time to explore Tenom. Someone said we should go to the coffee place where we’d be able to sample the famous Tenom coffee and buy some to take home. We walked from one block of shops to another but couldn’t locate the place. So Tenom isn’t such a small place if something as popular as a coffee outlet couldn’t be located.

“Is that it?” I asked Justin.

“No,” he said, “that’s the market.”

And further down: “No that’s a food court.”

“Closed? No customers?”

Closed shops



Another closed shop





More closed shops; note the sky!



It was a Saturday but many shops were closed; their shutters pulled shut but unlocked. It was as if the proprietors have given their staff a break so they could go home for lunch and maybe take a nap before coming back to the shops.

 We couldn’t locate the factory which produced the famous Tenom coffee so we walked along the quiet streets and five-footways to watch the people.

There were many used clothes vendors but hardly any potential customers rummaging through their goods. One could get bags and shoes, too!

There was a roomful of men enjoying themselves around the billiard tables… macam di KK. I was tempted to take a photo but those men would know I didn’t belong to Tenom so…

I passed through Tenom decades ago and I remember it as a vibrant, bustling place. It had been an important town during the NBCC era. With the building of the railway lines at the turn of the century, huge areas that were once inaccessible, virgin jungles had been opened up to turn them into rubber and coffee plantations. Because both these cash crops became huge revenue-earners, they later justified the building of the railway tracks through the uninhabited forests and along difficult terrain.

Tenom was also a busy town then because all traffic from the coastal towns of Sabah had to pass through Tenom to go to Keningau and Tambunan. (Tambunan was connected by road to KK only in the early 1970s.)

Since there was nothing much to see we strolled back to the railway station, stopping to see whatever caught our attention on the way.

People crossing the street despite the No-Crossing-Here sign. Note the closed shop.

Notice of road accidents. If there has been none since 1999, why bother updating the information? Good point!

Soon it was time to go. The train went pooot…pooooot! And Paul asked, “Is everyone on board?” No one appeared missing when the train pulled out of the station approximately two minutes before departure time.

But wait! When we were chugging along at ten miles an hour, and the Tenom Station was a faint dot in the distance, Caroline called! She had been left behind! Thank goodness for modern technology. Stop the train! Stop the train!

We discovered that not only the train could stop, it could reverse all the way back to the station!

Hello, Caroline and Annette. So sorry we didn’t notice you were missing!

There was no more exciting incident after that except at the stretch where a party of goats were strolling along the tracks dead ahead of our oncoming rail-bus.

Get off the tracks! Get off the tracks! But the goats, perhaps unaccustomed to the night train service, ran straight ahead. One poor, little goat must have been so tired it stopped on its track, turned around and looked up at us! Some passengers were already visualizing barbequed mutton—hot, moist and tender—beside their cold beers!

But the train slowed down and came to a complete stop. A few villagers standing near the tracks shooed the goats off the tracks into the dark night. We reached the station, happy that no goat was retrieved as a dead passenger.



The beautiful sunset was a fitting end to the great day!



Let me conclude this post with a delightful poem written about the North Borneo train. It appeared in the fortnightly North Borneo Herald and is believed to have been written in 1912 or 1913 by an un-named writer.

Over the metals all rusted and brown

Thunders the mail to Jesselton town.

Tearing on madly, racking not fate,

Making up time—she’s three days late.

See how the sparks from her smoke-stack shower

Swaying on wildly at three miles an hour.

Sometimes they stop to examine a bridge,

Sometimes they stick on the crest of a ridge,

Sometimes they find the line washed away

And postpone their advance the following day.

Beaufort to Jesselton—tour of delight—

Taking all day and the best of the night.

Over the rails all rusted and brown

Drives on the mail to Jesselton town.

(Thank you to Susan for pointing out the poem to NBHE! And our heartfelt appreciation goes to our gracious host, Paul, and the GMR and his SSR crew for making the trip possible!)

Thundering to Tenom

No one now remembers when the idea of a train trip to Tenom was first mentioned. Was it a month ago? Two months? Three? It has been dubbed the ‘great train trip’, the ‘great train robbery’. Members have registered themselves for the trip and then pulled out because of newer, more urgent commitments. Then there were those who had expressed to jump on board hours before the train pulled out of the station.



Boarding the rail bus at Beaufort 





I was so anxious not to be left behind for Saturday’s 7.45 a.m. trip that I woke up at four. When you get to be my age, and a train ride still excites you, plus you really look forward to meeting a bunch of complete strangers, I’d say ‘good for you’!

We—picked Meg and Justin on the way—arrived at the station in good time and saw the group members and their guests milling around the entrance. Hi Paul! Hi Adrian-from-KL! Nice to meet you Tony-all-the-way-from-NZ! Hello Rooney! Hello Joan and Andrew and Frank and Caroline and Margaret and Ariff and the rest!

The Sabah State Railways had given us one coach to ourselves and soon—poooot-poooot!—it  was time to go. It had rained the previous night but the faintest bit of rainbow in the morning sky promised better weather. We enjoyed the changing scenery as the train rolled southwards and everyone took photos with their personal gadgets: handphones, point-and-shoot digital cameras, videocam, Ipads or DSLR cameras with lenses as long as my arm.

Nothing exciting happened until we were approaching the tunnel when everyone reminded Lakeming about his ‘lominit botol’ joke. (I won’t repeat it here. You’ll have to ask him yourself!)



Photo courtesy of Philip Lai



We were given one hour to explore Beaufort so off we went to find a kedai kopi to get the breakfast we had missed in KK. Had we looked back instead of rushing out of the station, we’d have seen the others arranging themselves for a group photo!

After filling ourselves with coffee and the most delicious noodle soup in the whole of Beaufort we walked back to the station and boarded the rail bus which would take us to Tenom. There were about fifty of us (not including the staff of the Sabah State Railway who went along).

Most of the seats were already taken when Meg and I went up the rail bus and those without a human body in it had a bag placed by their friends. I walked to the back and found an empty seat. It just happened to be the engine driver’s—for the trip back to Beaufort. I had permission to sit in it as the engine driver would be at the opposite end for the trip to Tenom. Hurray! I just had to avoid touching the knobs, levers and switches, the railway staff told me.  (My foot slipped once or twice and landed on some metal thing on the floor and the train went ‘Poooot! Poooooot!’ Did my foot just do that? It had no idea!)

After the smooth ride to from Tanjung Aru to Beaufort, we discovered that the trip to Tenom went clackety-clack clackety-clack most of the way and there was a good deal of side-to-side movement. The SSR staff, ever helpful, said the rough movement was due to the joints between the old rails. Anyway, our muscles had a good workout; a free massage, someone said!

This post isn’t complete without a short history of the North Borneo Railway…

When I saw the tracks several miles out of Beaufort, in the middle of nowhere, and where miles upon miles on one side of the railway was a perpendicular rock cliff and the other side was the raging Padas River, I wondered what the British saw when they were working on the railway more than a hundred years ago. What did the labourers think, these natives who had never, ever seen a train? Did they think the white men were crazy?



The railway track is carved out of the rock face.





The lines run on a very narrow ledge.





A tunnel has been cut into the solid rock.



The man behind the NB Railway was William Cowie. He pressed for approval to build the railway lines after he was elected Director of the NBCC in 1894. Around the same time, Cowie also built the telegraph line connecting Sandakan to Labuan and he sent the first telegraphic message to London in 1897. (This was the first telegraph line in SE Asia!)

In 1896 the construction of the railway began. Two years later, it was possible to travel by train from Beaufort to Weston although the railway was not fully completed until 1900. Because Brunei Bay proved too shallow for large vessels, Cowie was forced to pull the line 57 miles north—from Beaufort to Gaya Bay. The construction was undertaken by a British company, George Pauling Construction and completed in 1902. The line from Beaufort to Tenom was completed in 1905 and to the terminus in Melalap a year later. The railway services were crippled during the Japanese occupation due to massive destruction on tracks, bridges and locomotives.

Who laid down the tracks? It’s easy to assume that our grandfathers and great grandfathers (the natives) laid down the tracks under the supervision of the British engineers. But that assumption would only be half right because the Chinese immigrants brought into the country had to work two to three days a week on the railway line or on road building. There were also Javanese labourers employed by the NBCC.

The labourers used tools available in those days: hoes, picks, axes and perhaps dynamite for blasting off chunks of rocks. As a result of working on the railway lines, perhaps many people fell ill or  met with accidents and lost limbs and lives.

Thanks to the engineers, the overseers and the coolies we now have a path carved out of  the rock face so our train could clackety-clack all the way to Tenom while we recline in comfortable seats and admire the view.