Burmese Days 3: The Rangoon Central Railroad Station

This is the third article on our tour of Rangoon, which is full of amazing architecture. The Central Railroad Station, off Kun Chan Road, is one of the oddest stations you are likely to ever see. The original on this site was bombed by Japanese planes early in World War II, and the building was destroyed by the retreating British troops in 1942. The present building was built (or rebuilt) between 1947 and 1954 based on a design by an engineer Hla Thwin, who used traditional Burmese architectural styles. The four pagoda-like towers are unusual and striking. The grounds north of the station (to the left in the top photograph) once consisted of extensive lawns, but now they are a concrete parking lot.

The size of the Central Station gives you an idea of the importance of the rail network in the immediate post-colonial era. The builders must have assumed that Burma would again be one of Asia's economic powers, as it had been before World War II. Recall that following occupation and wartime destruction, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos were impoverished and close to starvation (the Green Revolution had not yet greatly increased rice yields). According to Wikipedia, the Central Station is among 190 buildings on the Yangon City Development Committee’s list of heritage structures worthy of preservation.

Walk in the central entrance, and you enter an elegant ticket hall. This is where you buy long-distance train tickets. The ticket boots are from a previous era - no computers, no terminals, just some agents selling tickets. The signs are mechanical, meaning paper.

The next ticket hall to the east looks similar (and I am not sure why there were two halls), but this one has a modern feature: there is an ATM machine, a recent innovation in Burma (post-2013?). I tried to go upstairs, but all doors were locked. I do not know if offices in the upper floors are occupied.

The shed next to the tracks is quiet, but there are plenty of chairs awaiting their occupants.

If you plan to take the Circle train, you cross over to tracks 3 and 4. A guard directs you. An agent in the square ticket house way in the distance will write out a ticket for you and collect your 600 Kyats (= $1 US). From the overpass, you can also ascend to the Pansodan Street street overpass.

The locomotives, rolling stock, and tracks are a bit rough. Older locomotives were imported, but a newspaper article stated that the Burmese were beginning to make locomotives domestically.

From the Pansodan Street overpass, you can see that a large section of the rail yard is semi-deserted, the tracks slowly growing over with brush. It was likely much busier in the British era. The rusty water tower was probably for steam locomotives, and I read about a plan to introduce steam trains for tourists.

Another remnant of the British era is this handsome brick church across the street from the station. I think it is St. Anthony's Catholic Church, but may have written the wrong name. Once, Rangoon was a city of graceful church steeples, with every possible Protestant and Catholic denomination. It was a melting pot of religions, and you still see churches, mosques, temples, and synagogues only blocks from each other.

For previous articles, please click the links:
The deserted Pegu Club.
The odd Lim Chin Tsong mansion/palace.

These digital images are from my Panasonic G3 camera with 9-18mm Olympus lens or a Fuji X-E1 camera with Fuji 18-55mm lens. I processed the RAW files with Photo Ninja software. I also used Kodak Tri-X film in a Leica camera here, but have not yet scanned the negatives.

Philadelphia Underground

Like most historic East Coast U.S. cities, Philadelphia has a well-developed infrastructure of rail lines and subways running in and through the city. When railroads developed in the mid-1800s, connecting the major cities was an obvious goal, and, once the rail networks had been laid, the train was the fastest way to travel along the Eastern Seaboard. Ships and ferries still existed, but they were subject to weather delays, although a luxury cabin may have been more comfortable than a smoky, bumpy, noisy train. Regardless, rail companies got concessions to lay rails into the heart of cities, and, with their growing wealth after the Civil War, built ornate train stations.

Philadelphia's train stations are pretty business-like, without much ornamentation. But they work, carrying thousands of commuters every day. Take the SEPTA train or subway through Philadelphia, and you enter an odd underground world. It is pretty tame today compared to the 1970s, but is still interesting.

The SEPTA is a convenient ride into town from the airport. Along much of the way, the line is above-ground.

Suburban Station is an oddly prosaic name. It once had more of an above-ground presence, but now is a confusing mess of dingy underground passages and tunnels.

Businesses of the underworld.

Emerge from the underground, and here is City Hall. I wrote about this ornate Second Empire-style building in a previous article.

Night falls, and here are some of Philadelphia's denizens of the evening all dressed up and nowhere to go. The elegant lady in the tan safari dress is ready to head off to the Serengeti.

All too soon, it is time to return to Suburban Station and make our way back to the airport.

This is the 30th Street Station, where Amtrak and commuter rail lined merge or cross. It is not very glamorous compared to the extravagant Union Station in Chicago (please see the previous article).

Photographs taken with a Nexus 4 telephone.

Railroad in Markópoulo, Attika, Greece

Markópoulo (Greek: Μαρκόπουλο Μεσογαίας) is a market and farming town in Attica, east of Athens. For many years, it was a bustling market center that retained its small-town look, although it was only an hour or so drive from Athens. But recently, developers built houses and condominium apartments, some out in the olive fields. As usual, I am mystified; who are the potential customers? Today, Athens Elefthérios Venizélos International Airport is only a few kilometers away and the area is slowly becoming more commercial.

Quite by accident, I came across the historic railroad station. The Attica Railway (Greek: Σιδηρόδρομοι Αττικής) once linked Markópoulo with other rail lines near Kifissia (and connection with northern Greece) and with the town of Lavrion. The track was 1,000 mm (3 ft 3 3⁄8 in) (metric gauge). Since prehistoric times, silver was mined in Lavrion.  This silver once funded the classical Athenian society and construction of monumental temples like the Parthenon (but note, the mines were worked by slaves; democracy did not extend to everyone). In the late-1800s, Greek and French companies mined lead, manganese and cadmium, leading to construction of this rail line in the late-1880s.

The handsome old railroad station was last used in 1957 and fell into bad repair, but the municipality restored it in the late 1980s. According to Wikipedia, passenger service was discontinued in 1957 due to political lobbying by private bus companies.

This locomotive sits forlorn and unhappy, but it was once a proud representative of the railroad system.

The rail cars are in poor shape, and one suffered a fire.

This is the fifth post on Greek railroads. If you are interested in the topic, here are previous articles:

Peloponnese railroad Corinthos station

Kalavryta narrow-gauge line

Station in Milies, Pelion, Greece

Pireaus, Athens, and Peleponnese railroad

Photographs taken with a Panasonic G1 digital camera with Lumix 20mm f/1.7 lens. I thank my sister, who loaned me her car for this excursion.

Great Eating at Reading Terminal Market, Philadelphia

When you visit Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Reading Terminal Market should be on your obligatory visit list. You can find almost anything to eat there! The Market occupies the ground floor and basement levels of the Reading Railroad's former train shed and terminal, which was built up above the street level. The railroad part of the terminal was abandoned for many years, but the city revived the amazing shed and converted it into a convention center in the 1990s. Nice work!, especially in light of how many similar engineering monuments were destroyed in other cities in the mid-late 20th century during greedy and misguided disasters of urban renewal.  One infamous example: New York's Pennsylvania Station was demolished to build the cheesy Madison Square Garden.

According to an interesting article in Wikipedia, the Market was one of the first in the USA to include a state-of-the-art refrigerated storage area in the basement. The refrigeration system used brine water and ammonia operated by specially designed pumps, compressors, and other equipment.


This is the convention center and example of the amazing steel truss system that holds up the roof. Thirteen tracks once occupied this area, which now has a marble floor.

From the street level, the market dies not look like much, but the inside contains the emporium of gastronomic excellence and calorific excess. Readers of this blog know I love farmer's markets in all their varieties (Athens, Kathmandu).





The tradition of the farmers' market lives on! Peppers, cherries, corn - whatever you need. (The colors are a bit off because I did not have time to adjust a custom white balance.)

If you want some fish or meat, you can select as much as you want.


This is a cheese-lovers emporium.

Coffee-flavored soda?


Sandwich spreads of mysterious ingredients or buffalo eggs? Come and get them.

I prefer the olive oil varieties.

These are the bee wax products.

Finally, everyone's favorite: the chocolates.




Really, most people come here to eat and socialize and achieve calorie input.

Finally, at night, the crowds are gone and the market cleans up.

Photographs: 2008: Fuji F31fd digital camera. 2012: Panasonic G1 digital camera with color adjustments made in Silkypix Developer Studio 3.0 SE.