The 750mm gauge Aceh Tramway was the 'Cinderella' railway of Indonesia and seems to have been hardly visited by railway enthusiasts. The northern tip of Sumatra is fiercely independent, staunchly Islamic and has a well deserved reputation for being less hospitable to outsiders than the rest of the country.

The railway ran from Pangkalan Susu sharing mixed gauge with the Deli Railway to Besitang (where the line to Medan split off) and on to the regional capital Kutaraja, latterly known as Bandar Aceh. The earliest visitor I have traced was there in 1969 when there was some kind of service on the whole system. By 1971 reports spoke of its almost total abandonment, with just an occasional working from Langsa to Kuala Langsa. However, a 1972 visitor reported that it was being slowly converted to 3ft 6in gauge starting from the south end (conversion had reached Langsa) but it is not known how much of this was completed. The same report stated that the section on to Lhokseumawi was then diesel worked but the next section to Sigli was steam worked. The line on to Bandar Aceh had been closed by a landslide although there was still a little activity at the far end.

The Besitang to Langsa section was still open in 1975, but Continental Railway Journal reported that a visitor in August 1979 found 'the whole system in an advanced state of dereliction'.

The first pictures are by Peter Hodge from his September 1971 visit. The second pictures follow a journey down the line by Andrew Smith (with a couple from Geoff Todd) and he deserves a medal for services to the enthusiast fraternity for this epic! Finally as an addition to the original CD-ROM there are some pictures from Jakarta resident Tony Ford, taken in the same period. Unlike the other sections of this CD-ROM, this one contains a high proportion of black and white pictures - simply these were all that were available to me and I am sure you will understand that their interest more than justifies their inclusion.