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.

Old Beaufort

We dug up some old photos and decide to share them here. Some of the photos are undated. Hopefully someone out there could shed some light.

Kung Ming Primary School. Circa 1950s

Beaufort. No date indicated but its probably in the 70s

Aerial View of Beaufort. No date indicated

No date indicated

No date indicated

No date indicated

No date indicated

Probably on 16 September 1963. Notice the word "Bunap" ? It was Borneo Utara National Party

11 June 1960. Parade to celebrate the Queen's Birthday

No date indicated but likely a Malaysia Day parade

In Memory of the late Joannes R Labunda

Joannes R Labunda was one of the earliest members of NBHE and one of the most active ones. He returned to God on 12 November 2011 and he will be sorely missed. He left us with a treasure trove of stories of which we think he would want us to share. After all, NBHE is all about preserving and sharing. Rest well dear friend.

Gosh! My dear friends! Thank you for all your prayers and well wishes! I miss you guys (that includes gals) too and keep myself entertained following up with all your running commentaries! Will explain my absence from this important group as soon as I am able! Thanks again and Nite. - 18 August 2011

Hi guys, I too heard about that long breasted ghost and I will ask my mum the name. I am a bit indisposed at the moment but I can't resist telling you about the ghost that my friend and I saw when we were kids. I would have been about 10 or 11 at the time and my friend Gerald Masudal was perhaps 4 years older. This happened in Lutong one day when Gerard's adoptive father Anthony Jomikik had been drinking at our house at Jalan Merikan. By about 5.30 pm he was quite drunk and told my mum that he wanted to go home because Gerard was alone in the house and they were yet to cook dinner. Mum told him she had already slaughtered a chicken and had started on dinner for everyone and told him that I would go fetch Gerard from their house which was less than half a mile away on the other side of town. So off I went on my stepfather's brand new Raleigh gentleman bicycle which I had just learned how to ride! It was still light on the way home. Gerard was riding the bicycle with me sitting behind on the spring carrier. I was so small then my feet reached only on the nuts of the hub. There is a club called the Lutong Recreation Club between our houses nearer to theirs than ours. This was one of our favourite haunts and we knew every inch of the grounds. We got to the white picket fence separating the carpark in the front from the playground at the back where at the end there were two Jambu trees growing side by side about 15 feet tall. As Gerard entered the open gate on the picket fence, he suddenly jumped off the bicycle and scooted off to the front of the Club. I fell over to the left still entangled in the bicycle. I had no idea what was going on but as I extricated myself from the machine I looked up ahead and saw a man in white standing between the two Jambu trees and he stood equally tall! I quickly picked up the bicycle and pushed it back to the front where Gerard stood ashen faced and hugging one of the two pillars that supported the roof over the stairs. All he said was "Did you see it?" We ran across the dancing floor of the Club to peer through the glass louvers but the apparition had disappeared. Eerily, we heard dogs howling in the distance. After that we took the main road home! - 16 August 2011

Train To Tenom

Note: Paul Lajumin wrote this for Facebook and has graciously agreed to have it posted on our NBHE blog. All the photos and words are his. I merely inserted a few punctuation marks and played a little merry-go-round with a few of his words. I know you’ll like his story as much as I did. Enjoy! ...TinaKisil

Beaufort Station

I was at the GM SSR Office at 8am and met Frisco who had arrived earlier.

“Mana opis GM?” I asked the PA.

“Saannna hujung,” she said, “ tapi ada orang dan dia mau jalan pigi outstation.” I realised she didn’t want her boss to be disturbed.

“Tell your Boss ada polis cari,” I told her. That did the trick. She hastened me in!

By the way, after the recent mishap Ir.—that’s French for Ingenieur—Hj Zain Said is the busiest railway Boss in the world.

I will refer to Ir Hj Zain  as GM and Ir Frisco as FC here and btw in the olden days Railway GMs were simply called "JIMAR"  after the acronym "GMR" ( General Manager Railways). I heard the staff called their Boss GM not jimar though.

At the Tanjung Aru workshop

After a quick breakfast at the SSR Canteen, GM took us to their workshop just behind the Main Station for a quick walkabout and to see the Halloween wreckage. The burnt locomotive and coaches were a write off.

The workshop houses the biggest and oldest (mostly) Lathe Machine I have ever seen. Some are more than 80 years old. Mind you SSR even mould their own wheels. You’ve heard of mould rubber tyres? This one’s a bumper. Imagine pouring molten steel into a mould to make train wheels! This is an engineering feat and done right here in Tg Aru.

There are many more gadgets to marvel at but I leave those for your own eyes when we come back next month. Btw the senior technician told me the holes on the roof of their oldest shed were made by Japanese warplanes. Apparently, the sheds doubled up as shelters in WW2 so the Zeros strafed them as well.

The Halloween wreck

We left Tg Aru Station about 8.30 am. Our next stop was the recent mishap site at Kapayan. It looked like a warzone that had been struck by a phosporous bomb. Massive thermal energy had melted the tracks at two points. Solid metal like railway tracks can melt just like that! Imagine the heat that melted and destroyed the NY Twin Towers on 9/11. We drove to Beaufort because the tracks from Tg Aru to Beaufort are still out of service.

We reached Beaufort and were warmly met by the Beaufort Station staff. They must have thought we were VIPs when they saw we had been driven together with their JIMAR! :-)

GM got a phone call from the Works Ministry Perm Sec to see the Minister ASAP to brief him in detail about the Halloween Crash. So GM left us in the good hands of SSR staff to continue our journey to Tenom by rail.

Waving school kids along the tracks to Tenom

At 11.00 am we boarded a maroon coloured  railcar No. 2202 and started our journey. Including the Driver, there were seven of us altogether. The railcar is like my beaten up wheel barrow!

“How old is this railcar?” I asked the old timer driver. He shook his head before he answered.

“It has been here before me.”

“And how old are you, sir?”

“Nda lama lagi pencen; tahun ani juga,” the old timer replied. So I guess the juggernaut is about 60 years old or more!

We proceeded to our first stop, Rayoh Station, chugging through lush vegetation, rock-faced cliffs, the meandering Padas River and snow-white egrets flying alongside us.

This could have once-upon-a-time been a station master's house.

We saw schools, waving school kids, maintenance gangs, kuburan Sharrif, power stations and plantations. There was a group of elderly folks on the way home from a hunt. (A policeman can easily spot a neatly hidden bakakuk on a hunter’s side.) 

The train horn was as irritating as it was assuring we didn't hit animals and humans along the tracks especially at blind spot corners. I could see the driver enjoying pressing the horn switch. He reminded me of the crazy PI and Indon taxi drivers honking for nothing!

Halogilat Station

We stopped at Halogilat  Station. FC met some of his buddies still doing some work there. I used the toilet for first job. It was a clean and fresh smelling bathroom.

Btw, I wonder if Halogilat got its name from some swear word: ‘Heloo Gila!!’

It’s Tenom straight ahead after Halogilat and we reached this famous coffee town at about 12.30 pm.

Passengers waiting to board a Beaufort-bound train at Tenom

Many north bound passengers were waiting to board another train to Beaufort. I like the scene: passengers young and old, pretty maidens, farmers with live chickens and crates of beer, dating couple, mothers nursing babies and I bet I saw a group of elderly folks who were a bit high on ‘spirit'.

We continued our journey back to KK by SSR SUV. We stopped at Keningau for lunch after which I bought a Toto 4D 2202 at the outlet next to Restoran Sri Keningau.

The ride was enjoyable, the sceneries refreshing and I took many photos. FC and I will list out some side activities like visiting the Depot and Station for our trip next month.

I know the question of safety is uppermost on your minds especially after the recent mishap so let me assure you that train rides are SAFE.

Dusun Lotud Vanishing Rites

by : Justin Wong

Recently, Mr Frank Faurillo was in Tuaran and witnessed the following ritual being performed by some old ladies of the Dusun Lotud. The following clip is made available courtesy of Mr Faurillo.

Could this be the Mamahui Pogun ritual, a rite to cleanse the universe? The Rungus has similar rite too. Done every 50th and 100th years to cleanse the land. 

Frank found out that it was the last time the ritual was going to be conducted because the younger generation of Dusun Lotuds are not interested in continuing with the tradition. Most having converted to Islam and Christianity.

NBHE remembers and look forward for anyone to come forward to provide details of the Dusun Lotud's vanishing rituals.

Folklore from Kampung Takuli, Beaufort

By : Justin Wong

Someone from the North Borneo History Enthusiasts group once asked me how Dusun people ended living in Kampung Takuli, Beaufort, which to his knowledge is a Bisaya kampung. I was stumped because I never thought of asking that question. I've taken for granted that the Dusun had always been there. I told myself that I would get to the bottom of this. Today finally I had the opportunity to do so. 

A childhood kampung friend (distant relative in fact) came to visit my farm this afternoon, his name is Ilon or Lon. His baptism name is Godfrey in fact but I'm more comfortable calling him Lon.