Introduction
This article looks at the construction, the journey times, the rolling stock, and the traffic on the greater Trans-Indochina Railway in Vietnam from 1885 until 1938. The Trans-Indochina Railway is the line from Hanoi in the north to Saigon in the south but there were also lines further north to the Chinese border and further south to the Mekong Delta. It was these north and south “extensions” to the Trans-Indochina Railway that were built first in 1891 and 1885 respectively. The northern line, which initially ran from Phu Lang Thuong, 50km NE of Hanoi, to Lang Son, near the Chinese border, was a military line built to 0.6m gauge. The southern line ran from Saigon to My Tho, on the northern edge of the Mekong Delta, was an independent…
