The Old Order Changeth, Bago, Burma 2009

This is the nineteenth part of our 2009 Burmese Odyssey. To read more about our 2009 bash which includes many non-steam items, please see Rob and Yuehong in the Golden Land 2009.

I first came to Bago to watch the trains in 1996, in those days it was the centre of steam operations in the country. With a little bit of patience, not to mention the arrogance that comes from 25 years of bumming it round Asia, I could spend a month in the country and come back not only with change from USD 300, but with pictures of real steam at work to die for. Within a few years of my first reports - which did much to make a success of the international steam pages - enthusiasts would be paying up to 10 times as much for the plastic variety. As I have said many times, charter trains are like pornography, definitely second best to the real thing. But I digress..

The outstanding features of the railway around Bago station are the South and (especially) North cabins, classic British railway signalling at its best. The steam locomotives were all retired in mid-2008, but the signal cabins will last a little bit longer until the Indian contractors complete their work - already much of the lineside on the line north to Mandalay line is polluted with traffic lights. I took a couple of hours out from bashing stationary steam engines in February 2009 to watch and record something rather special possibly for the last time. I had booked myself a whole day to do it but I had a bit of a problem with some peanuts the day before which meant I lost a morning.

Bago South is the smaller of the two, I spent just a few minutes here:

This historic picture of a YD working past the south gantry which it controls is courtesy of Johs Damsgard Hansen:

I have spent quite a few hours watching trains go by the North Cabin, it serves not just the yard and the double track main line but also the loco shed and the Mottama branch, consequently it has a larger frame. What follows is definitely the result of a rush job but it does give an idea of the atmosphere surrounding it, possibly it is the largest such working cabin surviving in the world today (please let me know of other candidates):

Because of the curvature of the layout beyond the cabin, there are some very hard pulls indeed:

Underneath is the interlocking mechanism which leads to the signals/points:

The more substantial rodding is for the point work of course:

My thanks go the duty staff who made me very welcome:

As for the actual signals, let these historical pictures from the 1990s speak for themselves, they are from our CD-ROM Tiger Steam (frankly other peoples' pictures on it from the 1970s are more interesting)  :

Signal cabins are a little esoteric for Yuehong so she walked down later, she was more interested in the bridge decoration:

And berating her husband for being late for the sundowner jar:

That evening, Yuehong and I were invited for dinner with Han and his family:

For a non-drinker, Han mixes a very fair Rum (Sweet and) Sour, it was a good job we didn't have to drive ourselves home: